


Indiana Johnson and the Tree of Life

by Lakritzwolf



Category: Being Human (UK), Indiana Jones Series, The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Badass Anders, Crossover in three directions, Indiana Jones AU, M/M, un-subtle Mitchell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:09:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6615340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lakritzwolf/pseuds/Lakritzwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The death of a library clerk in Auckland and a phone call from Bucharest set off a chain of events that leaves Dr Anders Johnson, the world’s leading expert in Norse history, and the mysterious tall, dark and handsome John Mitchell caught up in a battle against time and deadly creatures that belong into the realm of legends. </p>
<p>Are the rumours about the Tree of Life really true? And if so, can Dr Johnson and his companion stop the holy tree from falling into the wrong hands? Because their failure could well mean the end of the world as we know it...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Auckland-Bucharest

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a prompt for the Spring Raffle on tumblr. Prompt 96: Indiana Jones AU.
> 
> As I started writing, this AU grew on me like a tumour, and now I can’t stop even if I wanted to.

* * *

One of three attackers had jumped on him from behind, but letting himself fall flat onto his back gave Anders enough room to pull out his pistol, whip it up and put a bullet into the other man’s head. Two others were now approaching him and yet another was trying to beat the crap out of the tall stranger, who was giving him a pretty hard time, however. 

Anders jumped onto his feet, grabbed his hat and put it back on before kicking the gun out of the first man’s hand and putting a bullet into his face as well. 

“ **Your fly is undone** ,” he said to the other approaching thug. 

The man stopped short and looked down at himself, and Anders shot him where he stood. Shaking his head, Anders now pulled one of the throwing knives from his belt and after a short, careful aim, planted it into the back of thug #4. As the latter slowly folded into a heap, the dark-haired stranger joined him, clutching his abdomen with a groan.

Rolling his shoulders and adjusting his fedora, Anders stepped over the corpse of thug #3 and approached the other man.

He looked down at the figure with a mop of black curls, who was moaning softly while trying to get up from where he had landed, and stowed away his pistol. 

Helping a damsel in distress, even if that damsel happened to be a man, wasn’t really on his to-do list, but he couldn’t have possibly ignored the fact that said male damsel had been attacked by four thugs with masks in a back alley in one of the shadiest parts of Bucharest.

“You all right, mate?”  
Rolling onto his back the other man groaned and dragged a hand down his face. “Don't know.”

Anders offered the man his hand and he took it to let himself be helped onto his feet again. 

“Thanks.”

Anders mustered Tall, Dark, and Handsome and adjusted his fedora. Just as he was about to make his farewell again, because who expected a thank you anyway, the other man spun around, eyes wide in panic.

“Shit, where is it?”  
“What?”  
“My bag!” Running both hands through his dark curls the stranger began to look hastily around. “Shit! No...” Only to fall onto his knees with a gasp of relief when he found the black messenger bag next to a bin in an unlit corner. “Thank fuck!” 

A few papers had slid out of said bag and the man looked up at Anders, eyebrows drawn together, then hastily stuffed those into the bag again that he quickly closed. 

“Look, I...” He began. “Thank you for saving my arse. I really should've known better.”  
“Known what better?” Anders hooked his thumbs into his belt.  
“I... I just... I kinda asked the wrong people the wrong questions. I was... I was supposed to meet someone here, but I guess that kind of backfired.”

“Oh, that's the game, is it?”  
Tall, Dark and Handsome looked up again and got onto his feet. “Game?”  
“Because I was supposed to meet someone here as well.”  
“Oh.”

The two stared at each other for a moment before the curly haired stranger tried to smile.

“Dr Anders Johnson?”  
“The very same.” Anders extended his hand. “So...”  
“Mitchell.” He took Anders's hand and shook it with a firm grip. “John Mitchell, but everyone calls me Mitchell.”

Anders nodded and had a look around. “I guess this isn't the best place to have a chat, so we'd better relocate.”  
“I have to admit I'm a bit at a loss as to my surroundings.”  
“You what?”

Mitchell shrugged apologetically. “I've been running for fuck knows how long after I realised those guys were after me. I mean... if it had been one or two, I would've made a stand, but five?”  
“Hang on, five?”  
“Uh, yes?”  
“Shit.”

Mitchell hastily looked around. “What?”  
“Because I offed four, which means one of them got away.”  
“Shit...” Pressing the bag to his chest, Mitchell looked around again. “Fuck!”  
“Let's get out of here.”  
“Right behind you.”

Anders and his new-found companion headed towards the better lit streets and managed to flag down a taxi. None of them spoke a word during the ride back to the hotel where Anders was staying. Not the best part of town, he couldn't afford that, but certainly not as shady as the neighbourhood where he had picked Mitchell up.

Once up in his room, Anders put down his hat and crossed his arms. 

“Out with it. Why am I here in Bucharest in a fucking hotel with cockroaches under the bed and not in my apartment in Auckland?”

Mitchell took a deep breath and opened the bag from which he produced a stack of papers.

“Did you bring it?”

* * *

_The day had started like any other. But on his way to his office, Anders got a phone call from his brother._

_“What do you want?”_  
_“You need to come to the library,” his brother Ty said. “The vault has been broken into and it looks as if at least one book has been destroyed.”_  
_“Oh for fuck's sake.”_

_Twenty minutes in a taxi later, Anders was at the library and with a nod for the head librarian he passed her desk and swiped the key card past the sensor, after a nod from the police officer guarding the door. The door opened and closed behind him again with a soft hiss._

_Hurrying down the stairs, Anders wondered how and why anyone would break into the vault of a library that wasn't even two hundred years old. The only things down here were shelves and shelves of old newspapers and magazines and a few books that were too ratty and old to still be lent out but which no one wanted to throw away. And, of course, a few locked cabinets with ancient originals, treasures of history._

_Ty, looking smart in his officer's uniform as usual, was already there and was impatiently waiting for him._

_“So.” Anders had a look around. “What happened?”_  
_“The security alarm went off at four this morning,” Ty explained. “One of the shelves in the back has been emptied rather violently, but there wasn't a trace of damage on the door, and the lock hasn't been hacked either.”_  
_“So whoever it was had a key card but didn't have access to the main office to deactivate the movement sensors down here.”_  
_“That's what it looks like.”_

_Anders had a look around and unsurprisingly, it had been one of the locked cabinets that had been emptied. Books were strewn haphazardly all over the place and it made Anders sad and angry to see books treated that way._

_Two other officers had fenced the area off and Anders and Ty ducked under the barrier tape to get closer to the cabinet._

_“History and Pagan Beliefs,” Anders muttered after looking at the head of the cabinet. “What the fuck?”_

_With Ty's help he carefully gathered the fallen books up and stacked them onto the nearest table. There were a lot of lose pages, but when Anders began to gather them it became clear they were all of the same book. It was then that his eyes fell onto a single book half hidden behind the shelf, lying open and face down and looking as if it had been thrown there. It had hardly any pages left._

_Anders inspected the cover. “Myths and Legends of Northern Europe during the Centuries.”_  
_Ty crossed his arms and frowned. “Why would anyone tear that book apart like that?”_  
_“I have no idea.”_

_Anders began to gather the torn pages, his heart bleeding at the magnitude of damage done to the old, brittle paper. It took him quite some time until he had reassembled the pages. Sure enough, there was one missing page._

_Anders carefully leafed through the lose sheets, a few pages back and a few pages ahead. “This is the section of mythical plants and creatures.”_  
_“So? Was someone looking for a magic stick?”_  
_“A magic stick to increase your virility?”_  
_“It's always about virility with you.”_  
_“It's a valid assumption, as people through all the ages and regions have always looked for ways to increase either the size and/or the performance of their dicks.”_

_Ty rolled his eyes and shook his head._

_“So.” Anders looked at the index and frowned. “The section in question is about the Yggdrasil.”_  
_“The what?”_  
_“The mythical tree of life, the centre of the universe, as the Vikings believed.”_  
_Ty's frown deepened. “I still don't get why whoever wanted this page didn't just borrow the book.”_  
_“If you want to borrow a book you need to have a card with your name on.”_  
_“Right.”_  
_“Do you have the name of the holder of that key card?”_  
_“We do, but so far we couldn't get in touch.”_

_Anders nodded thoughtfully and shut the book. Something about that book and the missing page, or rather the section of which the page was missing, tugged at his memory. He felt as if he had seen this book before, so a check of his own library in the office was worth a try._

_“As far as I can see now nothing else is missing,” Anders said. “Just a single page from a single book.”_  
_“Strange. Probably some nutcase from a weird sect,” Ty mused. “Like those druid freaks at Stonehenge.”_  
_Anders emitted a vaguely confirmatory noise and put the poor, violated book down again. It would be a piece of evidence so he couldn't take it with him._

_Later in his office, Anders went through all the bookshelves, watched by a very bemused Dawn who was sorting essays to be marked._

_“There you are,” he muttered as he pulled an old, ratty book out from under a stack of even older books._

_His phone rang, and it was Ty again._

_“We found him.”_  
_“Who?”_  
_“The holder of the key card.”_  
_“And?”_  
_“Just a clerk working at the library,” Ty said slowly. “We found him in his home. His throat had been torn out.”_  
_Anders was at a loss for words._  
_“Needless to say, we couldn't find his card anywhere.”_  
_“No surprise, really.”_

_Well, that was getting weird. Anders sat down at the desk and leafed through the pages until he found the one that had been torn out of the one in the library._

_It was a drawing of the Yggdrasil, together with a text of Viking runes in Old Norse. It was a script he had never seen anywhere else, and it had worked for three years trying to wrestle a meaning out if it. The runes were tiny, so Anders put on his glasses and squinted at the page, dotting down notes as he translated the words. Again. He had never given them much notice and had put the cryptic meaning down to him having failed to decipher the runes correctly._

_“Of Ravinsfjord and...” There was a long blank space “...find the third root.”_

_He put down the glasses with narrowing eyes. Someone had taken the page that might contain a description as to where to find the Yggdrasil, a tree of legends. Or rather, a part of the description, by the way it looked. And it had been important enough to kill someone to get it._

* * *

_When Anders came home that night, he found an envelope without a sender on in his post box. Frowning, he took it upstairs and after closing the door behind him, he dropped the rest of the post onto the table and opened the envelope._

_**Dr Johnson** _

_**Someone is looking for something that does not belong in the mortal realm. I know you're the world's leading expert in Norse history, so you're the only one who can help me to prevent that information from falling into the wrong hands. Contact me. Keyword is Bragi.** _

_There was a number with a country code Anders didn't recognise, and he sat down and stared at the letter for a long time while rubbing his hand across his chin._

_In the end, he picked up his phone and dialled the number._

_“Yes.”_  
_“Bragi.”_

_There was a long pause._

_“Do you have an issue of Legends and Myths of Northern Europe during the Centuries?”_  
_“I do have an issue of Myths and Legends of Northern Europe during the Centuries.”_  
_“Of thank god.”_  
_“Come again?”_  
_“Only two of each of these issues have ever been written, you know that?”_  
_“No, I didn't know that.”_  
_“We have to meet.”_  
_“Do we?”_  
_“Yes. I think I know how to find a certain tree.”_  
_“And?”_  
_“And only you can help me find it. And we have to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.”_  
_“Yes, you mentioned that in your note.”_  
_“Do you have any idea what anyone could do with an artefact this powerful?”_  
_“How do you even know there is an artefact?”_  
_“I don't know exactly, but I have a few people on my tail who think it exists and that I know where to find it.”_  
_“On your tail?”_  
_“Well... I think I have given them the slip.”_  
_“Hence the secrecy with the note and everything.”_  
_“Yes.”_  
_“You are aware that if such a thing exists then it has to be protected at all costs? The historical and scientific value of that find would be impossible to evaluate.”_  
_“Why do you think I contacted you?”_  
_“Where do I find you?”_  
_“Bucharest.”_  
_“Bucharest.”_  
_“Yes. Bring the book.”_

_The call was ended on the other side. A few minutes later Anders received a text with an address._

_Anders leaned back and closed his eyes. It was unimaginable to fathom what that tree, if it indeed existed, could mean for mankind. And equally unfathomable what catastrophic damage might be done if it indeed fell into the wrong hands._

_The very next day, Anders asked Dawn to book a flight to Bucharest._

* * *

Anders reached into the inner pocket of his utility vest and produced the book. Mitchell's eyes widened and he hastily dug into his bag, spilling papers everywhere. After some shuffling and searching, he produced a sheet of paper with a drawing of a tree and some Viking runes. It wasn't a torn out page but a copy of it, and it looked pretty much the same as the one Anders had looked at in his own book.

“Here, that's my side of the story,” Mitchell said. “Though I wasn't able to take the book, but I could copy the page in question. It’s all I got.”  
“And why couldn't you take the book?”  
Mitchell looked up. “I was in a real hurry, mate. Those guys are not to be trifled with and believe me, they kept a really close eye on that book.”

Anders closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Crazy Nazis?”  
“No.” Mitchell's voice was dark. “Vampires.”  
Anders couldn't suppress a snort.  
“Don't believe me?”  
“I find it a bit hard to swallow, yes.” Anders crossed his arms. “Vampires.”  
“Vampires.”  
“And what would vampires want with the Yggdrasil?”  
“I... uh... I'm just... a means to an end. But when I realised what they were after, I managed to get away.”  
“From vampires.”

Mitchell met his eyes. “You don't believe me.”  
“As I said, it's a bit hard to swallow.”

Mitchell didn't look happy and ran both hands through his hair. He was wearing ratty, green, knitted, fingerless gloves, Anders discovered, and he had rarely seen a piece of clothing more unappealing and ugly. 

Their eyes met. 

“So.” Anders looked at the papers. “So you ran away from mythical creatures to prevent them from finding a mythical tree that only exists in legends.”  
“Pretty much.”  
“That's one crazy story, mister.”  
“I swear it’s true!”  
“Hm.”

Not that Anders was actually one to talk, being a living incarnation of a Norse god and everything, so he was going to give the other man the benefit of doubt. Which begged the question if that keyword he had been given had been sheer chance. He decided to keep that under the radar for now, though, and try to discover how much the other one actually knew.

“If I so decide, for the sake of argument, that you are not a nut case and it is mythical beings we are dealing with,” Anders began ad picked up the copied sheet. “Back to the reason of us being here talking about those mythical beings.”

Mitchell reached for the book and gave Anders a questioning look. He nodded, and Mitchell opened the book and leafed through the pages until he found the one with the Yggdrasil.

“I have studied these things for years and I have all reason to believe that we have half a code each,” he said.

Anders sat down beside him, took his glasses out of the front pocket and put them on.

“Yours,” Mitchell began. “What does it say?”  
“ _Of Ravinsfjord_ and _find the third root_.”  
Mitchell nodded. “I can more or less read Old Norse, but I’ve never encountered that particular script before... but someone was convinced that this is the other half.”  
“And since some poor bloke in Auckland died for that piece of information it'd better be important.”

Mitchell stared at Anders with widening eyes. “They were already in Auckland?”  
“What do you mean, already?”  
“I... uh...” Mitchell swallowed. “I heard them talk about the trail of the two other books, and it leads to New Zealand. I thought that was a wrong trail, but apparently... apparently I was wrong.”  
Anders took a deep breath. 

After a pause in which Mitchell became more and more uncomfortable, Anders finally picked up the copied sheet. Sure enough, the same type of runes, the same tiny script.

“ _Three days north_ ,” he read. “ _East of Tjonnholdstind_ and _in Midgard_.”  
“It is the second half,” Mitchell breathed.

Anders picked up a pencil and filled the runes from his book into the spaces of the ones on the copied page. Then he wrote the translated sentence underneath.

Mitchell eagerly leaned forward. “ _Three days north of Ravinsfjord_ ,” he read. “ _And east of Tjonnholdstind, find the third root in Midgard._ ”  
“Tjonnholdstind is a mountain in the Norwegian Fjells,” Anders said thoughtfully.  
“Which means we have to go to Norway.”  
His eyebrows rising, Anders looked up. “Do we?”  
“If we want to stop them we have to be there before them!”  
“Again, point. But how do we stop vampires, and fuck knows how many of them, exactly?”  
“We will stop them.”  
“We and what army?”

Mitchell fidgeted.

“So?”

Mitchell fidgeted some more.

“Out with it. What is it that you're not telling me?”

“I kind of...” Mitchell sighed. “I kind of hoped that your god powers could take care of that.”  
“So it wasn't a fluke after all.” Anders felt anger rise in his guts. “Where do you know that from?”  
“I heard them talk about it,” Mitchell said defensively. “And I kinda...”  
“Listen.” Anders pinched the bridge of his nose again. “I may be a vessel of a Norse god, but these gods haven't been in Asgard for a while and are rather weak. In short, our powers rather suck. All I can do is convince people, and I mostly use it to get people into my bed and rid of them again.”

Mitchell gave him a look of badly concealed disgust.

“Deal with it. Long story short, I don't have any godly powers. And what little I have only works on mortals, mate, so I guess your vampires are out of the question, too.”  
“But...”  
“But what?”  
“But I heard...”  
“Spit it the fuck out!”  
“I heard the Yggdrasil can enhance and channel your powers!”

Anders stared at the vampire in bafflement, then he had to laugh.

“And what do you think will happen then? I am Bragi, god of poetry! Am I supposed to serenade them with songs and poems until I bore them to death? Oh... I can't even do that, because they're dead already!”

Mitchell swallowed.

“I see your plan wasn't really thought through.”  
“I know.” Mitchell's face darkened. “I was grabbing every straw.”  
“And what makes you so desperate to get to that tree before the other vampires?”  
“I told you that it would...”  
“So far you haven't really told me much, and I ask you to rectify that.”

After a long sigh, Mitchell leaned back. 

“What those... people who... I was working for... found out is that the Yggdrasil, the tree of life, could magnify... their powers, but being as they are powers of darkness, it would enable them to... ah... they believe they can turn people into vampires without having to bite them and feed them our blood. That's what they think, at least.”  
“And where do you come in?”  
“I... I just... I heard that...”

Anders waited.

“It is the tree of life, right?” Mitchell lifted his hands. “The knowledge I had about the tree is that it cures all illnesses, heals all wound, and restores life force. I don’t want to have... vampires access to that sort of... power!”  
“And?”  
“And what?”  
“No ulterior motive?”  
Mitchell took a deep breath and his eyebrows drew together. “I want to stop them. Isn’t that motive enough?”

For a long moment, the two just looked at each other.

“So the vampires want to use it to turn everyone into a vampire?”  
“Pretty much. I think they planned on leaving enough people human though, to have a reliable source of food.”  
Anders pulled a face.

“You know,” he said after a moment. “If that is true, do you have any idea how valuable that thing is for mankind? How many lives you could save with it? You could get rid of every plague and... God!”  
“I know. And at the same time, it could bring about the end of mankind, if in the wrong hands.”

Anders took a deep breath. “I am beginning to understand. And yes. We need to protect this tree. We need to make it available to science and humanity.”  
“Maybe we should just erase every trace of its existence. I think it is too powerful an artefact to belong into mortal hands.”

Anders looked back at the runes before him with a thoughtful frown. A time bomb. This piece of information was a fucking time bomb. And yes, Mitchell was right. They had to stop the vampires somehow, so the tree could be used for the benefit of mankind. 

“Whatever you decide,” Mitchell said slowly. “I'm going to find that tree.”

Picking up the sheet, Anders frowned and pursed his lips. Then he looked at Mitchell again. 

“Will you help me?”

After a moment's thought, Anders realised he couldn't possibly say no to that. 

“Just one more question.”  
“Shoot.”  
“Why Bucharest?”

This time, it was Mitchell who rolled his eyes. “Because vampires are traditionalists and have a stronghold in the Transylvanian Alps.”  
Anders had to grin. “Good, as long as we're steering free of any clichés.” Then his grin died. “But that also means they could still be on our tails, right? Being as one of the guys who were after you escaped.”

Mitchell bit his lips. “I guess we'd better get going then.”  
“Oslo?”  
“Oslo.”

They left Bucharest with the first plane they could get tickets for the next day.


	2. Bucharest-Oslo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After leaving Bucharest and arriving in Oslo, Dr Anders Johnson and John Mitchell make their way up into the Fjells to find the mysterious stone mentioned in the book.  
> But what they find up there is not what they had expected.

* * *

It was more for budget reasons than because of personal affection that Anders and Mitchell booked a double room in one of the cheapest hotels they could find in Oslo. Oslo was fucking expensive. 

They hadn’t spoken much during the flight; they weren’t friends and they hardly knew each other, and the reason why they were there together in the plane wasn’t a safe topic of conversation in those surroundings.

Now, however, after having checked in and getting settled in their room, Anders rummaged around in the bar while Mitchell unpacked his papers. 

“What I was wondering about...” He mused. “What I was wondering about is where those instructions come from.”  
Anders stopped looking for alcohol and straightened up. “What do you mean?”  
Mitchell met his eyes. “That inscription. The picture of the tree, and the runes that tell us where to find the third root. Where did that come from?”

Anders felt his eyebrows rise. “You don’t know?”  
Mitchell began to fidget.  
“You don’t fucking know?” Anders was hard pressed not to shout. “I flew across the world from Auckland to fucking Bucharest and now I’m in fucking Oslo where it’s five bucks an hour just to fucking breathe and you’re telling me you didn’t even source your shit?!”  
“Uh...” Mitchell swallowed hard. “I...”

Anders dragged his hand down his face with a groan. “Please tell me we haven’t been taken in by someone writing down a local myth.”  
“I...uhm... I thought you knew that,” was the meek answer.  
“And how the fuck was I supposed to know that? Am I a fucking clairvoyant? Fuck you!”

Mitchell flinched and stared at his papers. He swallowed hard and nervously shuffled papers around and stacked them together only to leaf through them again. He obviously didn’t dare to meet Anders’s eyes anymore. 

Anders fell into the chair opposite Mitchell with a huff and took out the book from his utility vest. He hadn’t wanted to entrust that treasure to Bucharest Airport luggage management.

“Let’s have a look,” he said after a sigh and put on his glasses.

He opened the book and leafed through it until he found the page about Yggdrasil. He read the following pages, and then went back. On the page before the Yggdrasil drawing, he found what he was looking for.

“Apparently, that inscription was found on a rune stone in Denmark.”  
Mitchell looked up. “A rune stone? So the inscription really dates back to Viking times?”  
“So it would seem.” Anders adjusted his glasses. “But there’s no mention whatsoever of which stone and where it is. Just Denmark. And there’s a lot of those fuckers there. It doesn’t even say if it’s Jutland or one of the Isles.”  
“Oh.” Mitchell sorted through his notes again. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Anders took the glasses off and stowed them away again. “So we do have a lead that’s not completely imaginary. And that means we’d better get our arses off into the Fjells to find whatever there is to find.”  
“The third root,” Mitchell said thoughtfully. “Do you think it’s really a root of the Yggdrasil? Because... I mean, we do know she has three roots, and one in each realm. So it could be that this... this is the root that extends into Midgard, right?”  
Anders kept his eyes on the book and turned the page to look at the drawing again. “I somehow doubt it will be that easy.”  
“Hm.” Mitchell looked at his papers. “Well.”

“Anyway.” Anders leaned back. “If we’re going up there then we’ll need some serious equipment and a good plan. It’ll take a while to get up there.”  
“Ah... how long exactly?”  
“I don’t know, I haven’t checked the maps yet. But my guess is at least two or three days each way. Which means bivouacking on the way there and back again.”  
“What? I mean... that long?”  
“We have to hike through the Fjells, and just be happy it’s summer right now. We’d never make it up there in winter.”  
“Uh... do we really have to walk there? I mean...”  
“And what are you thinking of? Hiring a chopper? That’ll help us enormously with keeping a low profile!”  
“Uh... no, obviously, but can’t we go there with a snow mobile or something?”  
“Mitch...” Anders pinched the bridge of his nose before looking at him again. “I said I haven’t looked at a map yet but I can use google maps on my phone, and so do you. But I can see you haven’t. That mountain is in the middle of a national park. No snow mobiles.”  
“Oh.”

Anders leaned back and crossed his arms. “Is there any part of your glorious plan to find the Yggdrasil that you thought through?”  
“I... uh... I thought I had, but apparently I was wrong.”  
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Anders got up. “Let’s get that equipment sorted.”

* * *

Anders was quickly getting pissed off by Mitchell's incredible naiveté. He hadn’t looked at the area they were supposed to go, had no idea what sort of equipment they needed – and that was heavy duty stuff and fucking expensive – and all in all, was as clueless as a puppy.

That evening, after they had stored equipment for several thousand $NZ in their room, Anders sat down with the map he had procured.

“So let’s see,” he said. “This is the Tjønnholdstind.” He marked the summit with a small circle with a red pen. “And this is.... fuck... there isn’t a Fjord south of that mountain.”  
“What?”  
Anders pressed his lips together. “There is a Fjord here,” he said and pointed at it with his pen. “But that’s not south of the summit.”  
“Maybe it’s just... just for orientation. How far north do you have to go?”

Anders dropped the pen and crossed his arms. “See, this is where I am stuck. Three days north. How long is three days? I can be fairly sure it’s not on horseback, looking at the terrain. But three days on foot? With a dog sled? On skis?”  
Mitchell looked at the map with tight lips.  
“Though to be honest, on foot is the most likely. But that still leaves me at a loss as to how far three days’ travel is. How fast can a man go up there? How many hours would he be on the way? Summer or winter?”  
“Shit...” Mitchell’s eyebrows fell down like a curtain. “Fuck.”  
“Hm.”

Anders stared at the map. 

“Laptop,” he finally said. 

It took him almost an hour of research, but in the end he had a few numbers of kilometres that seemed to make sense. 

“Next problem, which point at the Fjord? The fucking thing has more curves than the Venus of Willendorf. That point is several kilometres further north than that one.”  
Mitchell dropped his head and buried his face in his hands.  
“Hm.” Anders kept his eyes on the map. 

Then he slipped a ruler out of another pocket of his vest. He looked at his notes, and the distances, then calculated them down to the same scale as the map. He put the ruler down at several points, aligned north-south, and kept his eyes on the small red circle that marked the summit. 

Then, from each point, he drew a line due east. All in all he drew five lines, but that still left them with a rather large area. 

“Hm.” Anders had his eyes trained on the map. “All of these lines cross ridges and glacier tongues.... but it's not going to be on a glacier so... it's either that ridge or that one... No that's... that one.”

Anders leaned back and pointed at the map with his pencil. There was a ridge, a half circle encasing a glacier tongue. 

“Somewhere here. That ridge.”  
Mitchell leaned forward. “Are you sure? Because east of that mountain can mean anything. It could be somewhere at the coast for all we know.”

They exchanged a look, then looked back at the map.

“Let’s put it like this,” Anders said after a moment. “If someone made the effort of putting those descriptions on a stone where every Tom, Dick and Harry can find them then it’s probably meant to be found. So if we assume that is the case we can also assume that we won’t have to trek along that line all the way to the coast.”  
“But how can we possibly find it?”

Anders went onto Google maps. He found the mountain and zoomed in until he got a clear view of the terrain. 

“The good thing is that this area has been covered in glaciers since way back, so it’s unlikely the stone will be hidden under a shit-ton of ice and snow.”  
“And the bad thing?”  
“Is that we still have no fucking clue where exactly that is. We could be staggering around up there for days, especially if I'm wrong and it isn't that ridge here.”

Mitchell stared at the screen. Anders stared at the screen and zoomed in as far as he could. Then he began to drag the picture around. 

“Hold it,” Mitchell suddenly said

Anders stopped and Mitchell pointed at a summit of black rock. There was a small black dot in an area of dark grey.

“That?” Anders asked.  
“I... I mean, look at the shadows of the ridges. It’s... it’s on the same side. It’s the shadow of something.”  
Anders narrowed his eyes. “You sure it's not a piece of fly shit on the camera?”  
“It's a satellite picture, Anders.”  
“Point.”  
“I mean, I know... you would never be able to see a stone of two metres, or three, but the shadows are longer than that, right?”  
“Hm...” Anders leaned forward until his nose almost touched the screen. It seemed like there was a tiny dot of grey on the darker rock. It might have been a large stone and the shadow it cast. It might have been a trick of the eye, as well. “Maybe...”

Anders took a screen shot and opened that, then zoomed in until the single pixels were something around five millimetres in size. 

There seemed to be a pixel of grey, and a few pixels of almost black. It was really hard to tell. 

“It’s the only lead we have.”  
“I guess so.”

Anders leaned back, heaved a deep sigh and then took his phone to save the GPS coordinates of that tiny little dot.

* * *

It wasn't as if Anders wasn't used to roughing it. During his time at uni he had been on countless field trips, and even if his field trips nowadays were rare and only took him to Scandinavia where there was electricity and water and public toilets, back then he'd slept in tents under mosquito nets, had been forced to decide between shaving with a razor or not shaving at all – both not very pleasant prospects – and had been forced to shit into a hole dug into the ground and the only means to clean your hands being a bottle of disinfectant alcohol gel. 

So the absence of the amenities of modern civilisation didn't bother him that much, but he wasn't an athlete, had never been one for physical exercise and now had to push himself to his very limits on their way up through the Fjells.

Mitchell wasn't much better off, but he was a bit more coordinated while setting up camp the first time. Their dinner came out of plastic bags and was guaranteed free of any natural ingredients, and Anders could only crawl into his sleeping bag afterwards. When his feet had finally thawed, he slept like the dead.

They started breaking camp before sunrise and were ready to set off again with the first light. And that night, after setting up their tent, Anders checked the map again with a nod.

“We're there tomorrow. If the days were a bit longer right now we could have made it today.”  
Mitchell looked at the map. “What are we going to do if what I saw isn't the stone after all?”  
“No fucking clue.” Anders folded the map again. “We'll deal with that when we get there.”

They had their dinner in silence, but as he was crawling into his sleeping bag, Anders paused and gave Mitchell a puzzled look. 

Mitchell looked up. “Hm?”  
“You know...” Anders began as he wriggled himself into the sleeping bag. “I was wondering... I am freezing my ass off 24/7 to the point where I'm pissing ice cubes and you're just sitting there as if we're having a garden party.”  
“What?” Mitchell kneaded his hands. “Fuck... I do freeze! I just... I always ran a bit cold, you know?” Then his eyebrows lowered.  
“Ah, yes, not being such a pussy as I am, right?” Anders glowered back. “Suit yourself, Mr Tough Guy.”

The silence between them was a little strained after that, and breaking camp the next morning was an uncomfortable task with neither of them really wanting to talk to the other. In the end, they just set off again with Anders in the lead. 

At one point they stopped to catch their breath and let their eyes roam over the jagged summits looming ahead. Anders produced the map and his compass. 

“That way,” he said and stored the map and compass away again.  
Mitchell looked back and forth between Anders and the direction he had pointed at. “You sure?”  
Anders glared at him over the rim of his snow goggles. “Are you fucking serious?”  
“What?”

Shaking his head Anders adjusted his goggles again and looked ahead. 

“I am getting the unpleasant feeling that we're beginning to develop a muscle-and-brain routine here,” Anders remarked drily.  
Mitchell emitted a derisive snort, his eyes darkening in anger.  
“So you just go on with not freezing, and I keep us on the track, right Mr Tough Guy?”  
The Irishman's eyes darkened even more.  
“Just let me whine for a bit first, because my legs fucking hurt.”

Now Mitchell took a deep breath and looked back at their tracks. “You've been in the lead the whole time,” he said slowly.  
“Yes, because otherwise we'd probably be in Helsinki by now.”  
“Oh for fuck's sake.” Mitchell stepped around Anders and looked at the ridge before them. “Let me take the lead, you've been breaking the snow all the time. Just tell me where we have to go and then you can walk in my tracks for now.”

Anders leaned on his walking sticks and huffed out a deep breath. Then he straightened up again and stepped next to Mitchell.

“See that jagged bit over there that looks like a shark tooth?”  
“The one with the little rounded peak next to it?”  
“That's the one.”  
“So I just head for that?”  
“Until further notice.”  
“Good.” Mitchell lowered his goggles. “Let's go.”

After two hours of walking and a climb across a ridge they had to take another break to catch their breath. Below them was a minor glacier tongue and across from that, another ridge. 

They both spotted it simultaneously. 

“That's not a natural formation over there, is it?” Mitchell asked in a trembling voice.  
“I'll eat my hat if it is,” Anders replied, and they both rolled their shoulders to adjust their packs and set off again. 

An hour later, after crossing the glacier tongue, they had reached the stone that was about two metres high.

“How the fuck did it get here? It's not made from the bedrock around!”  
Anders shrugged. “Neither were the stones of Stonhenge. I don't think we'll ever know.”

After shrugging off his backpack, Anders produced a notebook, a pen and a compass, then started to walk around the stone, taking notes and ever so often using the compass to measure the angles of the stone. Mitchell looked over his shoulder and at the page in the notebook where Anders had drawn an airial view of the stone. It was triangular, but not a perfectly symmetric right triangle.

Anders had added a compass rose into the corner of the page and was still busily scribbling notes as to alignment and distances. 

“I've never heard of so accurately shaped triangular rune stones,” Mitchell said thoughtfully.  
“Me neither,” Anders replied and tapped his chin with the pen. “But what bothers me is that it's not symmetrical. Seems so fucking odd to make that effort of shaping that motherfucker of a stone into a triangle and then not getting the angles right.”  
“Maybe it's asking a bit much, considering their equipment back then?”

Anders looked up and adjusted the rim of his glasses he had exchanged the snow goggles for. 

“Mitch, the pyramids were all aligned perfectly and so is Stonehenge. There's stone circles all over the UK and don't tell me you haven't heard the stories about shit ass crazy hippies calling themselves druids going there to watch the sun rise over a certain stone.”  
“Uh... I did. Sorry.”  
Anders shook his head and looked at his notebook again. 

“Be that as it may,” he said after a moment. “It's triangular but not perfectly symmetrical, and it's not aligned perfectly with the cardinal points either. In fact, the way in which it's only a tiny bit off makes it almost look intentional.”

One corner of the stone pointed north-east, another south east, and the third one almost due west. The side facing north-west was blank. The side facing south-west had an engraving of the Yggdrasil symbol they recognised as the one from the book. On the third side, the one facing east, was an inscription, and Anders copied those runes down into the book.

Then he lowered himself down into a crouch and narrowed his eyes after pulling a slip of paper out from between the pages further back. 

Mitchell could hardly contain himself. “What does it say?”  
“Nothing, I'm afraid. If the fucking thing could talk I wouldn't have to sit here in the snow freezing my balls off trying to find out what that inscription means.”  
“Very funny,” Mitchell snapped.  
“Then shut the fuck up and let me work.”

Mitchell crossed his arms and stepped back, but his glare was lost on Anders who was focussed on the runes. 

Eventually he got up with a sigh. 

“So?”  
“So.” Anders looked at his notebook. “North of Rindum in the western heaths and east of the twin lakes, find the second root in Midgard.”  
“What?” Mitchell dropped his arms again with widening eyes. “That's it?”  
“I'm afraid so.”  
“But that doesn't make any sense!”  
“I'm sure it makes perfect sense to someone, somewhere, at some point in time. But it doesn't seem to be us.”  
“I don't believe this! What is that even?”

Anders looked at the notebook again. “It's the same sort of description that led us here. And... I mean, I don't have a clue where or what Rindum is, but western heaths sounds awfully like the west of Denmark which was just bog and heather at that time.”  
“So...” Mitchell took a deep breath. “So... is this where we find the next clue?”  
“That's my guess.”  
“But...”

“Fuck if I know.” Anders looked at the stone again. “We have two rune stones and both give us directions, and whatever there is to find, it's up to us to find it.”  
Mitchell sighed again. “And there's nothing else?”  
Anders shook his head. “Only the Yggdrasil symbol.”

For a moment it looked as if Mitchell was about to cry, but then he spun around and stared into the direction they had come from. 

Anders left him and headed back for his pack. After casting another look at Mitchell who was still staring into the distance Anders stowed the notebook away again and walked around the stone once more. But no matter how long and intensely he stared at the runes, they refused to change their meaning. There was no other clue, no crack and no scratch he had overlooked until now. Nothing.

“Here, Mitch?” He said after his third round.  
“Hm?”  
“Give us a hand up, will you?”  
Mitchell turned around. “What?”  
Anders pointed up at the top of the stone. “I want to have a look.”

Mitchell took a deep breath and nodded, then folded his hands for Anders to set a foot into. He boosted him up, and wobbling and desperately trying to keep his balance, Anders held on to the stone. 

There was nothing on top, either. Just a few stray crumbs of snow. No more runes, no sign or symbol. Nothing. 

“Fuck.”

They both stared at the rune stone for a moment longer.

“That's it, I'm afraid.” Anders picked up his pack. “This is all we have. Time to go back.”

It was clear that Mitchell was deeply disappointed, and he was hard pressed to not take it out on Anders. He didn't say another word, not until they had finally made it back to their rented SUV and had gotten rid of all their gear.

“Back to the hotel I guess,” he said in a heavy voice.  
“Yes, definitely. Have a hot bath, some proper food and a few drinks. Then we look at this shit again and figure out what to do.”

Mitchell cast one last look back at the mountains they had left behind, their summits now hidden in thick grey clouds.

“It could've been worse, Mitch. We made it down again before that.” Anders pointed at the heavy snow clouds.  
“Yeah... I know.”

Anders refrained from any attempts at cheering his companion up. Clearly, he wasn't used to following leads that ended in nothing. An archaeologists bread and butter, really. He himself only saw it as a challenge; those fucking rune stones would spill their secrets eventually.

* * *

True to his words, the first thing that Anders did was shower and then he drew himself a bath. He moaned almost obscenely as he slid into the tub filled with hot water, it was orgiastic to finally be warm again. 

After having boiled himself medium rare it was Mitchell's turn, and Anders ordered room service and had a few drinks. After having gorged themselves on proper hot food they sat down at the table again to look at the notes.

“So.” Anders put on his glasses. “There's a stone somewhere in Denmark with an inscription of where to find a rune stone in Norway. Then there's the stone in Norway with an inscription that sends us back to Denmark. I suppose.”  
“That doesn't make sense,” Mitchell said with what was almost a pout. It was almost adorable, too.

Anders crossed his arms onto the table and pursed his lips. 

“It does,” he eventually said. “Not yet, obviously, but it will. But the only way to find the piece that's still missing here is to go and find whatever it is in Denmark and see what we find there.”

“And what if there isn't anything else?” Mitchell crossed his arms, leaned back, and stared at the table.  
“Then we have to work with what we have.” Anders closed his notebook. “But first, we have to find it.”  
“North of...”  
“Rindum.”  
“Is that a town?”  
“I think so. But...”  
“But?” Mitchell uncrossed his arms and brushed his fingers through those messy curls of his. “Why does there always have to be a _but?_ ”  
“Because.” Anders shrugged with a half-smirk. “Where's your sense of adventure?”  
“Fuck you.”  
“Very eloquent. But as I was saying.” Anders looked at the runes again. “That inscription is maybe a thousand years old. The question is if that town still exists and if it does, if it's still called the same as it was back then.”  
“Oh for fuck's sake.” Mitchell closed his eyes and dropped his head back.

“But lucky for us, I know exactly the right person who can help us. She's a historian and works in a very renowned museum in Jutland. And that is the perfect opportunity to visit her and said museum. I've been wanting to go there for years, you know?”  
Mitchell slowly lifted his head again. “Because of the museum, or the woman?”

Anders grinned and leaned back as well. “Moesgård, and the woman is a bonus. We go way back and haven't seen each other in years. But as I said, if there's one person in Denmark who can help us find Rindum, it's her. And that's why we're going to Århus.”  
“And where is that?” Mitchell asked.  
“Århus? Denmark’s second largest city with a worldwide renowned university?”  
Mitchell shrugged.  
“In the east of Jutland,” Anders said with a small sigh. “Really, you as a European should know that sort of thing. Anyway,” he went on quickly to forestall an angry remark of Mitchell that he could see was coming. “Moesgård Museum is only a stone's throw away from there.”

“Right.” Mitchell sighed again. “Plane tickets?”  
“As far as I know we can take a ferry from Oslo to Frederikshavn in the northeast of mainland Denmark. Then we can rent a car again and go south to Århus and Moesgård. And then, hopefully, we find out where to find whatever the stone in Norway leads us to.”

Mitchell dragged both hands down his face and sighed. 

“So. Århus?”  
“Århus.”


	3. Oslo-Århus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the directions on the Norwegian stone, Anders and Mitchell now head to Denmark. Lucky for them, an old friend of Anders is willing to help them decipher the meaning of the words on the stone. Again, what they find is not what they expected, but the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I’m randomly messing around with the TAJ canon just because.  
> And yes, sometimes a simple typo can be so hilarious that you have to incorporate it.
> 
> And thanks to eeftheotter again for the edit. They are so not happy.
> 
> * * *

* * *

Both Anders and Mitchell had to agree that it was much more pleasant to take the ferry instead of going by plane. They had boarded at nine fifteen in the morning and arrived in Frederikshavn at the very northern tip of Denmark at six thirty pm (The ferry was rather luxurious and even had a spa, and Anders hadn’t let the opportunity pass him by). And since the car rental was closed at that time they had to find a hotel room for the night.

The first thing after checking out was going to the car rental, and after only two hours on the motorway, they had reached Århus city centre.

After checking into yet another hotel, they went to find themselves a place to eat, and they had lunch in a nice restaurant, outside on the terrace directly adjacent to what once had been a river heading for the Baltic Sea. Nowadays it was no more than a stream that was made part of the architecture and adding to the flair of the town by being tastefully encased and contained by stone, flowing past cobblestoned sidewalks and under bridges to vanish unseen somewhere into the harbour basin.

“Nice city,” Mitchell casually remarked on their way back to the car park. “Reminds me a bit of Dublin.”  
Anders looked around again. “This place looks like Dublin?”  
“No, it doesn't look like Dublin at all.” Mitchell smiled wistfully. “It just feels like Dublin. Has the same sort of flair.”  
“I couldn't say, I've never been there.”  
“Oh!” Mitchell's eyes lit up, and Anders had to admit that they had a very pleasant colour. “You should, you definitely should!”  
Anders gave him a small, lopsided smile. “And I guess you're volunteering to be my tourist guide?”  
“Absolutely! I...” Mitchell faltered and then cleared his throat. “I mean... if you want to.”  
Anders just grinned and let Mitchell squirm for a bit longer before he replied: “Sure, we can do that. After this madness is over.”

After they had paid their parking fee Mitchell took out the keys; Mitchell as a European was more used to driving on the wrong side of the road and besides, as the passenger Anders could watch the scenery pass him by.

Moesgård Museum was less than half an hour's drive away, directly past the outskirts of town and through a forest of old and gigantic beech trees that was the local recreation area. It also had a moderate entrance fee and they had a look around until they reached the heart of the exhibition: The [_Grauballe Mand_](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rj4Fk7JDgDQ/TW0LET3xPbI/AAAAAAAACpY/G6bdZI117ro/s1600/grau_3.JPG%20), an extremely well preserved bog body.

“I don't like the look on his face,” Mitchell said, sounding rather uncomfortable.  
“Well you wouldn't look amused either if you had been dead for centuries,” Anders replied with a smirk.  
Mitchell stared at the body for a moment longer before he turned away.  
“The interesting bit is that he died a violent death, though we have no idea if it was murder and the body was disposed of in the bog or if it was a sacrifice. Though my theory is that it was the former.”  
“And how do you know that?”  
“Well his facial expression for example, and the large cut in his throat is another clue.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Though it almost looks as if his throat was torn out rather than slit. Explains the look of horror on his face.”  
Mitchell was gritting his teeth.  
“Do you think vampires were around up here at that time?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know that?” Mitchell sounded a little strained. “And why is that even important?”  
“Scientific interest.”  
“Hm.”  
“What? You getting squeamish at the sight of a body that has been dead for longer than you've been alive?”

Mitchell shrugged, still standing with his back to Anders, and Anders decided to drop the topic. It was making Mitchell more than uncomfortable and he wasn't a total asshole.

After they had finished their tour, Anders headed back to the reception desk, handed the friendly young man his business card and asked if it was possible to speak to Dr Michele Pederson. The receptionist looked at the card and picked up a phone.

Anders and Mitchell retreated into a corner and looked at old etchings of Århus and the museum itself while they waited.

“Dr Johnson?”  
Anders turned around. “Yes?”  
“Dr Pederson told me send you through. It is through there and last door to left.”

He unlocked a door with a sign saying _Kun til medarbejdere_. It wasn't rocket science to figure out that this meant Staff Only.

Anders and Mitchell headed down the hallway and Anders knocked on the last door on the left side.

“Come in!”

Anders opened the door and smiled his best Sunday smile at the dark haired woman behind the desk.

“Michele! Long time, no see!”

Dr Pederson returned the smile, got up and walked around her desk. Having reached Anders she then tilted her head – and slapped him so hard that not only was Anders's head whipped around but that he actually staggered a step back.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Anders gingerly rubbed his chin. “I think you dislocated my jaw...” He cautiously moved his jaw back and forth.  
“Seems like I didn't, which is a shame since it would have stopped you from giving me any bullshit.”  
“Nice to see you too,” Anders muttered and took a step back. “I guess a hug is out of the question now.”  
“You can be glad I didn't call security to have you removed from the premises.”

Mitchell watched the ongoing between Anders and Michele with unmasked amusement. He was keeping himself in the background, but Anders could practically _hear_ him grin.

“God.” Dr Pederson brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I've been wanting to do that for seven years.”  
“That's a long time to bear a grudge, babe.”  
“If you call me that again you can carry your nutsack on a string around your neck on your way out.”

Mitchell couldn't suppress a snort.

Anders inhaled softly and slowly crossed his arms, first pressing his lips together, then pursing them.

“Michele...”  
“I don't want useless apologies. You weren't sorry back then or you wouldn't have fucked off on me like that, and you sure as fuck aren't now otherwise you wouldn't have walked in here as bold as brass.”  
“B... Michele...” Anders rubbed a hand across his chin. “I won't apologize then, but will you let me explain?”

She crossed her arms and gave him a death glare.

“Please?”  
“There is no going back, you sorry fucker.”  
“None of us wants that.” Anders cleared his throat. “But can I explain? I know I shouldn't... that's a moot point now.” He took a deep breath. “Idun had been reincarnated.”  
Michele's face turned from angry into baffled in the space of a heartbeat. “Oh.”

Anders shrugged. “That's all, really. Bragi felt it and was drawn to her like a lodestone and for once, I had no powers to resist him.”  
“Well.” Dr Pederson crossed her arms. “Was she worth it at least?”  
“Gimme a break!” Anders swallowed hard. “She was twenty-one! And...”  
“And?”

Anders actually fidgeted.

“And what. We fucked. But we both couldn't handle it and eventually, she left the country.”  
Dr Pederson's eyes narrowed again. “But if Bragi had drawn you back to New Zealand from Copenhagen... why did he not force you to go after her?”  
“Maybe because he got his end away a few times? I don't know. It's not gone, though. She's still there, lurking at the back of my mind, and if we ever run into each other again there's gonna be the devil to pay.”

Dr Pederson looked at Anders in his discomfort for a moment before she dropped her arms and sighed.

“Okay,” she finally said. “As excuses go it's not the worst I've ever heard.”  
Anders managed an unhappy shrug.

“Right,” she said after a moment. “Since you obviously didn’t come across the world to apologize for dumping me in a cheap motel in Copenhagen seven years ago... why are you here?”

Anders cleared his throat and put himself together again.

“We need your help.”  
“With what?”  
“With... something of a rather... look, this is...” He cast a look at Mitchell. “We're on to something really big. But it's also dangerous, one person already died because of it.”

Dr Pederson blinked a few times, slowly, like an owl.

“It's confidential. I hate to ask you this, but you're the only one who can help us.” Anders produced the book from his vest. “You ever seen that before? Or heard of it?”  
Narrowing her eyes, Dr Pederson took the book and looked at the cover. “No. Never.”  
“There's a bookmark.”

She opened the book at the page where a slip of paper was sticking out and looked at the drawing of the Yggdrasil.

“Those runes say: Three days north of Ravinsfjord and east of the Tjønnholdstind, find the third root in Midgard.”

Dr Pederson slowly looked up again. “The Yggdrasil? Seriously?”  
“I know we're on to something. I just know it.”  
She looked down at the page again. “And this is the location of the tree of life?”  
“No.” Anders sighed and shook his head. “It's the location of a rune stone.”  
“A rune stone?” She looked up again. “How do you know?”  
“Because we've been there.”  
“We?”

Anders coughed in embarrassment and turned around.

“Michele, this is John Mitchell. He brought this business to my attention. Mitch, Dr Michele Pederson.”  
“Pleasure to meet you, ma'am.” Mitchell gave her a bright smile.  
Dr Pederson looked him up and down with a slightly calculating look. 

“So now after we've been properly introduced,” Anders said a bit more sharply than intended, “Can we get back to this?”  
“Jealous?”  
“Fuck you! As if! I just want to have this over with!”

Michele smirked and the expression on Mitchell's face couldn't have been more confused.

“So you've been there,” Dr Pederson said, her smirk only slowly vanishing. “And that is where, exactly?”  
“In the fucking middle of nowhere on the Norwegian Fjells. Jotunheimen National Park, to be precise.”  
And what did you find there? Just the rune stone?”  
“Just that. But here, look at this.”

Anders took out his notebook and showed her the sketch and the notes he had made.

“North of Rindum in the western heaths and west of the twin lakes, find the second root.” Dr Pederson frowned. “That's it?”  
“That's it. So basically, the description as to where to find the stone in Norway gave us a description as to where to find... something else.”  
“Something.” It sounded more than doubtful.  
“Well someone went through the effort of putting up fucking rune stones and engraving descriptions so there has to be something!”  
“And you think that something is the Yggdrasil.”  
“I have reason to believe so.”

Dr Pederson stared at the notebook for a moment longer.

“So basically, you need me to find Rindum.”  
“Yes.”

She handed the notebook back and headed for her desk.

“What a lucky thing that we live in the age of electronics and I don't have to dig through hundreds of dusty old pages in an archive,” she said. “But this will still take a while. So what about...” She looked up. “What about you head back to Århus and find a way to pass the time, and we meet tonight at eight in front of the cathedral? I should be able to dig up something until then.”  
“Sounds like a plan.” Anders smiled and nodded. “See you tonight, ba... Michele.”  
Michele narrowed her eyes and made a scissors-motion with two fingers.  
Anders grinned and bowed his head.

On their way to the car park Mitchell shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Anders?”  
“Hm?”  
“What did she mean... with you being jealous?”  
Anders snorted. “She thought I was staking my claim.”

It took Mitchell a few seconds, then his eyes widened almost comically. “On me??”  
“On you!” Anders chuckled. “Silly, I know. Someone with your taste in wardrobe and your notion of personal grooming...”  
“Hold on a second!” Mitchel glowered at him.  
“No offence!” Anders lifted his hands and smiled. “There's nothing wrong with your dress code or your grooming. It just so isn't my thing. So no worries... your virtue is totally safe from me.”  
Mitchell's eyebrows formed into a rather impressive, dark ridge.  
Anders shrugged. “Michele likes to take the piss as much as I do. So even without the Idun thing it wouldn't have worked out between us, we would constantly have been at each other's throats.”

“Actually, about that,” Mitchell began cautiously. “Could you explain?”  
Anders took a deep breath and released it again in a long exhale.

“See,” he began hesitantly. “There's not only benefits to being a god vessel.”  
“I figured as much.”  
“And gods... well, some of them have a spouse. And when the vessel of a god and a goddess meet, and those gods happen to be hooked up...” He shrugged. “There’s not much we can do about it. It just takes you over.”  
“Sounds unpleasant.”  
“It is. I felt her... Mitchell, I felt her return to this world and it happened in Auckland while I was in Copenhagen banging Michele.”  
“TMI.”  
“Fuck you. Anyway, I couldn't even stay the night: I had to get my stuff and head for the airport and I took the next plane to Dubai that I could. It was.... a nightmare.”

Mitchell looked at him and his eyes softened in compassion.

“So... long story short, Bragi and Idun wanted to be together, and she and I didn't stand a chance. I mean fuck... she was hardly more than a kid. Gods take their vessels on their twenty-first birthday.”  
“Fuck.”  
“Yeah.”  
“So...”  
“So. We found each other and proceeded to screw each other's brains out until we literally couldn't move anymore.”  
“And then?”  
“Then?” Anders huffed out a bitter little laugh. “Then we started all over again. We tried to go each our own way after that. But it didn't work. We were drawn to each other... and... that god business... it's too strong to resist. And she couldn't handle it. She had a boyfriend, you know? Of course she didn't want to bang a man who was fifteen years her senior! And I didn't want to bang a girl... well... I don't usually have a problem with age, but...” He sighed. “Of course her boyfriend wasn't happy, and the whole thing went to shit, and I was so sorry and I didn't want to do that... and neither did she. The next day she was at my door again.”  
“Shit.”  
“And a huge, steaming pile of it. In the end, she tried to run. She fucked off, and I have no clue where she is.”  
“But you can still feel her?”  
“I do. A bit like when you know someone is standing behind you even though you didn't hear or see anything. And I have to admit...” Anders paused for a moment. “He felt her back then, and he still feels her now. If he ever decides he wants her back, then there's nothing I can do. And as soon as he finds her, neither can she.”

Mitchell stopped. “But that's rape! Your gods are fucking raping you!”  
“Tell him that, not me.” Anders kicked the tire of the car. “Can we not talk about this anymore?”

Mitchell took a deep breath and unlocked the car. They were both silent on their way back to Århus.

* * *

Anders and Mitchell were waiting at the large plaza in front of the cathedral and listened to the clock tower ring out eight o'clock.

Ten minutes later they could hear someone hurrying towards them.

“Anders!” Dr Pederson was a bit short of breath. “Bloody hell, I forgot how hard it is to find a parking space around here.”  
“No worries,” Mitchell said brightly. “It's only ten minutes.”  
She brushed a few strands of hair back. “I know a nice place not too far from here. I guess you already had dinner?”

Anders and Mitchell nodded.

“Then let's go. They do have a really good selection of whisky.”  
Mitchell's eyes lightened up like those of a child at Christmas. “Really?”  
“Really.” She winked at him.  
Mitchell remained oblivious to her attempt at flirting. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Mitchell was in heaven once they had settled down. He went through the menu as if he was reciting an ancient Gaelic prayer while Anders and Dr Pederson watched him with amused faces.

In the end, after they had equipped themselves with drinks, Dr Pederson took a cardboard file out of her bag.

“This is what I found,” she said and took out a printed sheet. “There are several towns called Rindum, but there is one of which I think it's the one you need.” She then produced the printout of a map. “This particular Rindum dates back to the late Iron Age and was the seedling of what later became the trading centre Ringkøbing.”  
Anders put on his glasses. “That sounds about legit.”  
“Plus, it's out west,” Dr Pederson went on. “What used to be the inhospitable bogs and heaths. There's a reason the Danes have the expression _vest fra Herning_ – west of Herning, which is that city here – as their version of _in the middle of nowhere_.”

“So, where's Ringkøbing?”  
“Here. There's this Fjord. There is Ringkøbing, and that's Rindum. Today, it's a part of Ringkøbing itself.”  
“Great.” Anders looked at the map. “Now we have to find the twin lakes, whatever that means.”  
“I found them already.” Dr Pederson pointed at two blue splotches north of Ringkøbing. “See those two lakes? If those aren't your twin lakes then I don't know where else they might be.”

She handed Anders the print and took a sip of her drink. Mitchell had been so busy making love to his whisky that he had been totally oblivious to their conversation. Dr Pederson gave him a flirtatious smile, but he remained clueless; he smiled back, lifted his glass and rolled around a sip of whiskey on his tongue with his eyes closed.

Anders looked at her with a smirk. Dr Pederson pouted back, and Anders chuckled as he looked back at the map.

“There's not much of interest out there, right?”  
“Farmland,” she replied. “Hundreds of square miles of potato fields and pig farms but the whole area is flat as a board so you can see the horizon in every direction from almost everywhere.”

“Hm.” Anders looked at the map. “I just wish we knew what we are looking for.”  
“Oh, I thought of that as well. And since we have two rune stones already, I thought that with a bit of luck, we get another one. So here... this is another print of the map, this time with every known rune stone marked.”  
“With the emphasis on known,” Anders replied thoughtfully.  
“Believe me, out there you can't hide a rune stone. So if it hasn't been pulled down by a farmer who didn’t want to plough around it, it's still out there.”  
“If it is a rune stone at all.”  
“You're welcome,” she replied with a slight edge to her voice.

Anders looked up with an apologetic smile. “Thanks for thinking ahead. I knew I could rely on you and your brilliant mind. Thank you.”  
“It's quite all right.” Her smile softened. “So here. West of the twin lakes. There is exactly one stone registered here. It's there, you can't really see it on this, but I marked it for you. It's positioned here, at the edge of that shelterbelt.”

After taking a deep breath, Anders bit his lip and stared at the map. “Thank you,” he said again.  
“No trouble, you know I love these puzzles as much as you do. Sadly, I have too many lectures at uni so I can't come with you. Keep me updated, will you? I'm dying to know where this will lead.”  
“Promised.”

Anders lifted his glass, Dr Pederson lifted hers, and they smiled after taking a sip of their drinks.

* * *

“I am beginning to understand just why _West of Herning_ means in the bloody middle of fucking nowhere,” Anders remarked after they had pulled over on a small road and gotten out of the car to look around. The only landmarks around were the silos of the pig farms.

“So...” Mitchell wrinkled his nose. “Pigs, huh?”  
“And potatoes. Lovely.”  
“Pigs and potatoes?”  
“It's a brilliant system, isn't it? You grow potatoes, feed those to the pigs, and use the slurry to grow more potatoes to feed more pigs. Doesn’t make any money, but you get subsidies for the whole stuff and can make a living after all.”  
Mitchell shook his head. “I guess that's why most bacon in Europe is Danish.”  
“Denmark has about seven pigs per citizen.”  
Mitchell froze. “Are you kidding me?”  
“Look it up on Google. Or ask anyone who lives around here.”

They had another look around. Fresh country air was definitely something that happened elsewhere.

“We're not that far away,” Anders said. “According to the map it's... Oh.” Right into the direction he was pointing at was a farmhouse. “I guess we have to ask permission there.”  
“Do you speak Danish?”  
“No. Well, a bit. But most Danes speak English, so I guess if we meet somewhere in the middle we can work something out.”

They headed towards the farm which looked rather boring and empty. The yard was nothing but an orderly layer of grey gravel.

Then the door opened and a man stepped out who looked just like any average Joe. Or Søren, as it were. He tried to look neutral but was in fact unable to hide an air of suspicion and mild hostility.

“Kan jeg hjælpe jer?”  
“Ah... ja,” Anders replied and closed his eyes in concentration. “We... vi søger et... sten?”  
“En sten?” The man smiled. “Are you from England?” he had an accent, but was fluent.  
Anders sagged in relief. “Thank god. New Zealand, actually, and my Danish is a bit rusty. Yes, a rune stone, to be precise.”  
“En runesten?” The man narrowed his eyes in confusion.

Anders stepped forward and pulled one of his business cards out of a pocket. “I'm Dr Anders Johnson, Archaeologist. I'm here for scientific reasons. We're cataloguing the Danish rune stones.”  
“Ah.” The man smiled again. “I have one beside the field.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, then he looked both Anders and Mitchell up and down. “Do you have... gummistøvler...” He scratched his head. “Boobs?”

Anders blinked and looked down at himself, and Mitchell snorted. Then the farmer pointed at his feet.

“Oh! Jesus...” Anders bit his tongue. “Boots!”  
“Ååååh nej...” The Dane looked slightly embarrassed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Boots, yes.”

Anders looked down again. He wasn't wearing smart shoes but solid, ankle high trekking boots, so he wondered what he needed wellies for as it hadn't rained in days. “Uhm...no?”

The man gave him a smile that was part compassion, part glee. “Go ahead. Beside the field, ved hækken.” He pointed at the hedgerow.

Anders thanked the man profusely and he and Mitchell then headed around the house and towards the field. The smell got worse.

And then it became immediately clear why the issue of wellies had come up.

“Oh for fuck's sake.” Anders dropped his head back and looked heavenwards. “Why?”  
Mitchell looked at the slightly soggy and slightly slimy soil. “Is that...”  
“Slurry, yes.”  
“Shit.”  
“That's what I said, wasn't it?”

They exchanged a desolate look.

“I am not driving back to Herning to buy a pair of wellies now.”  
“We will need new shoes after this, though.”

After another moment of silence they both simultaneously shrugged, rolled up their trouser legs and bit the bullet.

The rune stone was standing directly at the end of a large hedgerow and as they came closer, Anders's skin began to tingle. It looked exactly like the one in Norway. At that moment, Mitchell had spotted it, too.

“It's triangular, too, isn't it?”  
“It is.”

The slurry forgotten, both of them hurried over the slippery ground towards the dry dam of earth that had never been ploughed.

Anders immediately started mapping the stone with pencil, notebook and compass.

“Anders, there's the Yggdrasil symbol,” Mitchell whispered.  
“I don't think you have to whisper, it's not going to crumble into dust now after it has stood here for fuck knows how long.”  
“Very funny.”

Anders didn't reply and added a compass rose to the sketch.

“Hm.” He narrowed his eyes. “It's the same orientation as the one in Norway. Just... slightly off.”  
“So slightly that it's intentional?”  
“Maybe.”  
“And the runes?”  
“Haven't got to those yet. Hang on.”

Anders copied the runes, and immediately realised that they looked awfully familiar.

“Oh for fuck's sake...” He shook his head in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? Is this some kind of cosmic joke?”  
“What?” Mitchell hurried to his side. “What is it?”  
Anders looked up with his mouth a tight line. “You want to know what these runes say?”  
“Of course I do!”  
“Then listen closely.”  
“Just cut the crap!”

Anders melodramatically cleared his throat.

“Three days north of Ravinsfjord and east of Tjonnholdstind, find the third root in Midgard,” he intoned.

Mitchell stared at him, totally dumbstruck. “Are you kidding me?”  
“No.”  
“What the fucking fuck?”  
“Good question.”  
“What is this bullshit even!” Mitchell dragged both hands through his hair, making his curls fly everywhere. “This is fucking ridiculous!”

Anders closed his notebook and shrugged. “This... we're still missing something,” he muttered and stared at the stone. “We have a stone in Denmark telling us the directions to a stone in Norway, and that stone in Norway directs us back to the stone in Denmark.”  
“Someone, somewhere, is having a great laugh,” Mitchell growled.

They looked at each other again.

“It's a dead end,” Mitchell finally said, his shoulders sagging and his head hanging low in resignation. “It was all in vain. All for nothing. I'm sorry Anders.”  
“Giving up already?” Anders asked and nudged him in the ribs with his elbow. “Come on, this has to make some sort of sense.”  
Mitchell shrugged, not meeting his eyes.  
“I mean, someone went through the pain of dragging a huge motherfucker of a stone that weighs at least two tons up through the Fjells onto the top of a fucking mountain! There has to be something behind all this!”

They both looked at the stone again.

“Fuck.” Anders stowed the notebook away. “We're done here. It's back to the hotel... with probably a pit stop someplace where you can buy shoes.”

They both looked down at their feet and their shoes that were crusted in soil and other things that didn't bear thinking about.

“And we have to pay extra for cleaning when we return the car,” Mitchell added with a sigh.  
“Probably.”

They headed back to the car and ignoring the stench headed for the nearest city, which happened to be Herning, and found themselves new shoes, to the great amusement of the sales assistant. Her thoughts about stupid tourists were of course never spoken out loud but very clearly on her mind and in her eyes.

They both were silent on their way back to Århus, each of them lost in his own thoughts.

* * *

After a shower and a change of wardrobe Anders and Mitchell found themselves dinner – really not a difficult feat in this city – and went back to their hotel room.

Anders immediately sat down at the table and stared at his notebook. Then he took out a topographical map of Scandinavia.

He looked at that for a very long time with a very thoughtful frown.

And then, with a determined move, he got up, headed for his bag and took out a large pencil case. He produced a mechanical pencil, an eraser, a pair of compasses, a set square, a calculator and, from his pocket, the compass and a ruler as well.

“What are you doing?” Mitchell asked as he sat down opposite him.  
“I am adding the stones to the map,” Anders replied, adjusting his glasses. “It's... complicated.”  
“I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Mitchell got up again and fell onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. Anders focussed on his map again, measuring and calculating and measuring and double checking until he was sure he had both stones in the exact coordinates and in the exact alignment to the cardinal points. Then he took a red fine liner for the final touch.

They looked almost identical. The differences were minuscule.

Then he looked at his notebook again; he had sketched both stones onto opposite sides so he wouldn't have to go back and forth between the pages to compare the notes.

The sides with the direction to each other seemed aligned. The other sides of the stones seemed parallel, but then again, maybe they only seemed that way.

With narrowing eyes, Anders took the set square and put it down on the side of the Danish stone that had the description on it. And it matched the Norwegian stone. Anders took the pencil and drew a line. The stones were perfectly aligned.

“So these do belong together,” he muttered to himself. “Find the third root... find the second root...” Anders tapped each stone with the pencil. “Find the second root... find the third root... it just doesn't make sense that way... second root... third root... there has to be a first. There has to be a first root.”

Mitchell lifted his head when he heard Anders mutter and got up. He slowly sat down and looked at the map and the line.

“Third root... second root... there has to be a first root... there are the runes, there is nothing, there's the Yggdrasil, but those sides are perfectly aligned... find the first root... find the first root....”

Anders narrowed his eyes even more and touched the tip of the pencil on the side of the Norwegian stone that had the Yggdrasil symbol on it. He took his ruler and put it down along that side. Then he drew the line. In one direction, it headed across Lithuania and Belarus. In the other direction, it passed the Shetlands, the Faroer Islands and crossed right through Iceland before heading for Greenland.

“Yggdrasil... Yggdrasil...” Anders said softly. “Find the first root....” He put the ruler down next to the Danish stone, right along the side where the Yggdrasil engraving was. He drew another line and southbound it went through Germany and headed for the Mediterranean. Northwards it crossed the Shetlands, the Faroer Islands and...

“Iceland,” Anders whispered and Mitchell almost jumped out of his chair when he yelled: “Iceland!!”

Mitchell leaned forward and all hairs on his arms rose.

The two lines crossed in the middle of Iceland.

Anders dropped his pen with a satisfied smile. “X marks the spot.”  
“Fuck...” Mitchell breathed and swallowed. “Iceland?”  
“And it looks as if that's the central glacier right in the middle.”  
Mitchell narrowed his eyes. “A glacier? This time it's a glacier? Are you sure that it's there? What about the other sides of the stones?”  
“They're absolutely parallel and will never cross. It's there or nowhere.”  
“But... a glacier?”  
“I know. We won't find a tree there anywhere. But someone wanted the two stones in Norway and Denmark to lead anyone who could figure them out right there.”  
“So we have to go to Iceland next?”  
“Yep.”

Both of them leaned over the map again and their heads collided.

“Jesus!” Mitchell rubbed his forehead. “Sorry! I'm sorry!”  
Anders touched the top of his head with a strained grin as he looked up.

Their faces were only inches apart. 

They stared at each other for a moment before Mitchell jumped out of his chair. “Okay! I guess we'd better get packing then, right?”  
“Right.” Anders looked at the map again. “We're going to Iceland. Fun-fucking-tastic.”  
“Plane this time, I assume.”  
“I'm not going to sit on a ferry to Reykjavik, if there even is such a thing, with my thumbs up my ass for days.”

Mitchell looked at him again. “Reykjavik?”  
“Reykjavik.”


	4. Århus-Reykjavik

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the rune stones yielded their secret, Anders and Mitchell now finally find out what exactly the mystery behind them is. But now their enemies have finally caught up with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't put in pictures of the crevasse but it exists. The coordinates are [here](https://www.google.dk/maps/@64.8154377,-18.7987837,582m/data=!3m1!1e3), just zoom out and you’ll have Iceland.
> 
> * * *

* * *

“You know what I think is weird, Mitch?” Anders asked after they had retrieved their luggage at Reykjavik Airport.  
“Other than what we’re after and what we’ve found already?”  
“Apart from that, yes.” Anders adjusted his fedora and had a look around. “Ever since Bucharest no one has ever bothered us again.”

Mitchell froze for a second and had to hurry a few steps to catch up with Anders again. 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Anders went on in a low voice. “Real bad.”  
“I can’t imagine we got away from them either,” Mitchell said meekly. “I wonder what they’re up to.”  
“There’s two possibilities.” Anders looked up and met Mitchell’s eyes. “Either they lost our tracks and are still after us or they haven’t lost track of us at all and just let us do the work before they engage again.”  
Mitchell swallowed hard.   
“I guess we’ll find out sooner or later.” Anders shrugged and looked around again. “Let’s find a taxi and a hotel first.”

The taxi driver knew a hotel that was affordable without being run-down, but as they checked in, Anders wondered if all the expenses he’d had so far were still going to be worth it. True, they seemed to be following quite hot a trail, but there was no guarantee they would ever find what they were after. They didn’t even know what exactly that was, to boot.

But he wouldn’t be Dr Anders Johnson if he gave up that easily now. Whatever it was that was hidden under that glacier in the middle of Iceland, it was now almost within reach. And only then he’d know if it had been worth it or not. Unless it was another hint that would lead them to what would probably be some sunken island off the coast of Greenland or some such shit.

He sat down at the small table under the window and went through his notes and his sketches. 

Two rune stones with the directions to each other, calling each other the second and third root in Midgard. And no mention of a first root. 

Two symbols of the Yggdrasil that had led them here to Iceland. 

With narrowed eyes Anders had a look at the map again and at the two stones and the lines crossing over Iceland. He took a topographical map of Iceland that he had bought in Århus and looked back and forth between the two maps, then started calculating coordinates to pinpoint, or at least attempt to do so, where exactly the lines were crossing.

There was definitely the central glacier right in the middle of Iceland. And the lines seemed to cross right at the centre of that glacier. Now there was a high chance of deviation due to imprecision on his part; he didn’t have access to a computer with GIS to calculate the exact position with the click of a mouse. 

On the other hand, the coordinates of the stones would have to be exact, and the angles of the stones’ surfaces weren’t hewn perfectly even either, so you might get exact coordinates of a point using GIS and still miss the actual spot by several kilometres. 

With a sigh, Anders got his laptop out and went to Google maps again. The central glacier was definitely a volcano; if it was extinct or only dormant was not known. The fact was that it was dormant enough to have developed an ice cap, and that ice cap must have been there at the time the stones had been put up. 

Anders zoomed in on the glacier and the – almost – featureless whiteness of the surface. 

A few darker structures were ridges of rocks, most likely what was left of the old caldera, and Anders zoomed in on these. 

Of course there was nothing visible, even when he tried to find something similar to what Mitchell had spotted when they had looked at the Tjønnholdstind in Norway.

The bathroom door opened. “What are you looking at?” Mitchell asked as he sauntered over.

Anders looked up. Mitchell was wearing a towel. His hair was curling in moist ringlets around his face and he was wearing a towel. Yes, a towel with the logo of the hotel. Between bare legs and bare chest, there was a white towel. Contrasting nicely with the dark chest hair. 

“Enjoying the view,” Anders said and blinked before looking back at his screen. “It’s white. The stupid glacier I mean. It’s white as far as the eye can see.”

Mitchell hung the smaller towel he had used to dry his hair over the back of the other chair and bent down, resting his hands next to the laptop on the table. 

“That’s where we’re going, right?”  
“The thing is big, Mitchell. This is worse than crawling around on the Fjells in Norway.”  
“What are those dark spots? Rocks?”  
Anders kept his eyes glued to the screen. “What’s left of the caldera, I assume.”  
“Caldera?”  
“The collapsed crater of the dormant volcano under that glacier.”  
“A volcano?” Mitchell leaned closer to the screen. “There’s a volcano under that thing?”  
“A dormant volcano, or maybe an extinct one, though given Iceland’s geology I doubt that.”  
“So the next hint, the... the first root, is on the top of a sleeping volcano?”  
“On a layer of ice on the top of a sleeping volcano.”

Anders looked up again but that brought his face into very intimate vicinity with Mitchell’s pectorals so he hastily looked at the screen again. 

“And now I’m looking for something, anything, that could give us a hint as to where we have to go.”  
Mitchell pointed at the middle of the glacier and the tiny dark spot, not quite as dark as the rocks protruding from the ice. “What is that?”  
“That one?”  
Mitchell tilted his head. “It’s in the middle. The exact middle of that glacier, isn’t it?”  
“It fucking is...” Anders looked at the map and the small dark spot. “Right in the middle.”

He zoomed in further. The picture had a surprisingly high resolution.

“It’s a crevasse,” Anders said hesitantly. “A fucking crevasse in the exact middle of the glacier in the middle of Iceland.”

They both stared at the screen in silence for a while. Anders tried zooming in further and, to his surprise, the resolution was so high that they could even make out the bottom of the crevasse and what probably was a meltwater stream.

“I’ll be fucked,” Anders muttered. “We both are if it’s down there.”  
Mitchell straightened up again and crossed his arms. “Why?”  
“Why?” Anders dared to look up again. “Why? Are you kidding me? We have to cross a fucking glacier and then climb down a crevasse we have no clue about how deep it is!”  
“So this is it, then?”  
Anders threw his pencil against the nearest wall. “Fuck that!”

Mitchell slowly backed away.

“I need another credit card!” Anders crossed his arms and stared furiously at the screen. “The equipment for this is costing a bloody fortune! Two fortunes! Fuck that!”  
“So... so this is it, then?”  
Anders emitted a derisive snort. “It’s a lot of money, but...”  
“But?”  
“But it’s just money.” Anders looked up with a crooked grin. “If we really find what we think we will find there then...  
“You’ll get it all back, right?”  
Anders’s eyes narrowed. “Get it back? You mean I claim rights to the Tree of Life and sell those powers to the highest bidder?”  
Mitchell took another step back. “Fuck no! I meant...”

“I know you didn’t.” Anders got up. “But this is more than a hike, even a hike up in the Norwegian Fjells. We need more planning for this one.”  
“So...”  
“So.” Anders arched his back and stretched his arms, making his joints crack and pop. “We need to do research, find out what we need, how and where to get it, and then tackle it step by step.”  
“And now?”  
Anders met Mitchell’s eyes with a smirk. “Now we find some dinner and get some sleep. Our immediate future is going to be rough.”

“You’re really hands-on for a scientist.” Mitchell opened his suitcase and smiled. “I always thought you guys were born with a desk chair glued to your backside.”  
“And you should put some clothes on and be a pants-on assistant otherwise I won’t take you along.”

Mitchell straightened up with a frown, maybe a bit too fast, as the movement was enough to loosen the towel. He managed to grab it just in time.

“I’ll... wait for you in the lobby and have a drink,” Anders said quickly and made a hasty exit.

* * *

Their shopping list was long and daunting, but Reykjavik had everything they needed. And since they still had the equipment they had bought in Norway they primarily needed ice climbing gear to get into the crevasse. 

The real expenditure however was a rented Ford FX4 Offroad, a motherfucker of a truck with a cargo bay that could hold a snowmobile and still had room for all their other shit.

As they left the outdoor shop with their arms full of gear, someone bumped shoulders with Anders without a single glance back at him.

“Dickhead,” Anders muttered and looked up at Mitchell who had turned around when he heard Anders curse and now looked as if he had seen a ghost. “Mitch?”  
“He...”  
Anders adjusted his grip on the bags and looked back into the shop where the guy had vanished. “He?”

Mitchell lifted his hands, as much as he could with his arms full of bags, and pointed at the screen of the security camera that was hanging above the entrance. Anders turned around and waved cheerfully at the camera and the small figure on the screen waved back. Then he looked questioningly at his companion again.

“He wasn’t on there,” Mitchell whispered, his eyes wide with fear. “He wasn’t on it!”  
“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”  
“Car,” Mitchell said and headed for the parking lot in what was almost a run.

“So,” Anders said after they had thrown their stuff on the backseat and sat down. “What.”  
“He wasn’t on the screen,” Mitchell said again, running both hands through his hair. “I saw him walk past you and... you were on the screen, and he wasn’t on it!”  
Anders lifted both eyebrows.  
“He wasn’t visible on the screen, Anders.” Mitchell swallowed hard. “Which means he is one of those whose image can’t be captured.”  
Anders blinked slowly.  
“A vampire, for fuck’s sake! They don’t have a mirror image and they can’t be captured in pictures!”

Anders took a very deep breath. “So they’re here on our trail after all.”  
Mitchell didn’t reply.  
“It sure as fuck doesn’t come as a surprise.” Anders nudged Mitchell in the ribs. “Back to the hotel. We have everything we need, so we’d better get going. It’s too late today, so tomorrow morning we’re gonna get up at stupid o’clock and get going.”

Mitchell was tense and silent on the way back, and Anders fared little better. With all the flying they had had to do there hadn’t been a chance in hell of taking firearms along; he had gotten his hands on some in Bucharest while trying to find Mitchell but had been forced to dispose of them again. Now there simply wasn’t enough time to go through the administrative procedures to legally acquire them, and neither for finding a source to get them illegally. So now their weapon arsenal consisted of a whip, a handful of throwing knifes and a larger one Anders could wear on his belt and a pair of knuckle dusters. Mitchell knew how to use those; that’s what he said at least.

So the vampires were here. That meant that either they had come to the same conclusions as he and Mitchell had or they had simply followed their tracks and now had to outrun them to their destination. Anders adjusted his fedora and stared out of the window.

Either way, the race was on.

* * *

Stupid o’clock came much sooner than either of the two would have liked, but it would be a few hours at least to reach the glacier, and they had to go offroad for the last bit. There was no saying how the terrain would be and how long that last bit might take.

Since the weather held up and the ground was dry they made good progress and reached the glacier shortly after noon. Then it was dressing in expedition clothes, packing the ice climbing gear and getting the snowmobile going. 

Mitchell proved rather useful for once; he could drive a motorbike and while a snowmobile was nowhere near a bike in terms of roadability, gearing and accelerating worked roughly the same. He managed to get used to the thing surprisingly quickly, a fact Anders could be nothing but grateful for.

Yet with the large pack of gear strapped behind him, Anders was forced to sit rather close to Mitchell, almost pressed against the taller man’s back. At least that kept his face out of the head wind. That’s what he kept telling himself repeatedly. A few dark rock formations came into view and vanished again, and despite their speed Anders found himself staring at those as they passed by.

Keeping an eye on the compass, Anders occasionally corrected their course. 

It was less than an hour after they had reached the glacier surface that Anders thought he heard something and turned around to look back.

“Fucking bloody fuck… Mitch!”  
“What?” Mitchell called without turning his head.  
“We have company!”  
“Shit!” Mitchell revved the engine. “How many?”

Anders narrowed his eyes. 

“Three, as far as I can see!”

Three snowmobiles without luggage but each with two riders as well. Mitchell geared up but the others were slowly and inevitably catching up. 

“Mitchell!”  
“What?”  
“Whatever happens, keep driving!”  
“Got you!”

Anders pressed his lips together and didn’t even dare to allow himself the hope that their pursuers didn’t have guns. He unclasped the whip from his belt and checked the throwing knives. Their pursuers were fanning out, doubtlessly trying to surround them. One of them vanished out of sight for a moment as they sped through a large, shallow indentation in the surface. 

A bullet whizzed past far too close for his liking as a gunshot cracked somewhere behind him.

“Bloody fuckturd…”

The first of the three snowmobiles had almost caught up with them, gusts of snow billowing up behind it and glittering in the sun as the vampires pulled level on their right side. The other driver revved the engine and Anders cast a look over his shoulder to check on the progress of the other two. One was catching up on their left side and the third was just emerging into sight again but further away, the dip having thrown them a bit off course.

Anders could see that the man behind the driver of the first snowmobile was cocking a pistol. He tried to duck even though he knew it was futile, but Mitchell had seen the movement too, as their pursuers were almost level with them now. He jerked the snowmobile around so the bullet went astray, but the move threw Anders off balance and he fell into the seat. Snow billowed up in a huge cloud and momentarily blinded the other driver while Anders could only clamp both arms around Mitchell to keep himself from tumbling over. He almost lost the grip on the whip and barely managed to catch it in time. 

The guy with the pistol aimed again, but this time Anders was ready for him. He stood up on the footrest, clamped one hand around Mitchell’s right shoulder to keep his balance while pulling out a throwing knife. 

Even above the ear splitting howling of the two snowmobiles Anders could hear the second man yell at his driver and the snowmobile swerved closer. They were, in fact, so close now that Anders could see the nasty grin of the driver. Close enough to see a pair of fangs.

“Oh why the fuck did I get up this morning…”  
“What?” Mitchell yelled.  
“Keep driving!”

Lips pressed tightly together Anders took one of the throwing knives, aimed and let it fly. It buried itself cleanly in the vampire’s throat. With a howl of the engine the snowmobile capsized and both driver and passenger ended up helter skelter in the snow and were all but buried with the snowmobile ending up with its skis in the air. 

Mitchell whooped and was almost cut short by another bullet whizzing past. By sheer luck the second snowmobile had been forced to evade a cluster of rocks with a few dangerous swings. That provided the precious moments that Anders had needed to take out the driver of the first one, but now they were catching up. Another shot was fired at them.

“FUCK!”

Anders lifted the whip again. The other snowmobile had caught up and he didn’t waste a second. He lashed out with his whip as hard as he could and caught the driver straight in the face. Even above the noise of two howling engines Anders could hear his scream. Their opponent lost control of his vehicle and it capsized before violently colliding with a cluster of rocks. Metal screeched and parts of the snowmobile were catapulted into the air. They landed with puffs of glittering snowflakes.

A few more bullets whizzed past as the third snowmobile finally caught up, and Anders could see that the person behind the driver was wielding a Kalashnikov. 

“SHIT!”

Mitchell didn’t ask and geared up, making the engine howl. He dodged a few smaller rocks sticking out of the snow but despite Anders’s hopes the other driver didn’t lose control of his vehicle. More snow billowed up but they were too close to get the full blast of kicked-up clouds of white crystals. 

Suddenly the snowmobile lurched under them as they hit another, smaller indentation and the unexpected movement made them both slam down so hard their spines were almost shooting up through the roofs of their skulls.

Mitchell quickly gained control again and sped up even more, so hard that the snowmobile fishtailed. Anders yelped, fell down on his ass rather painfully – again – and ended up with his face pressed into the back of Mitchell’s neck. 

He spat out a few curls and quickly straightened up again with a hearty curse. 

The guy with the Kalashnikov aimed again and Anders lashed out with his whip. It ensnared the weapon and he wrenched the gun out of the other’s grip and back to himself, catching it elegantly. The vampires screamed.

Clamping the whip between his knees Anders cocked the machine gun and released a burst. The kickback almost knocked him over, he fell into Mitchell’s back and the snowmobile lurched so violently that both of them were almost thrown off.

“CAREFUL!” Mitchell screamed.  
“I’m working on us not getting killed!” Anders screamed back.  
“As you were, then!”

The vampires were almost level with them now and Anders could see the second one reach out for him as if he was preparing himself to launch himself at him.

Anders’s heart almost skipped a beat as he adjusted his grip; he reloaded and released another burst with a scream that was part anger, part fear. The gun rattled, making his ears ring, empty shells flew everywhere, sparks flew where the bullets his metal, but even the noise of the gun and the two engines wasn’t enough to drown out the screams of the two vampires as Anders riddled them with holes. The snowmobile slowed as the driver lost his grip and fell over and it quickly vanished out of sight as Mitchell kept driving at full speed. Anders looked forward and the head wind bit into his eyes.

He closed his eyes for a second and swallowed. 

“We lost them!” he yelled at Mitchell.   
“FUCK YEAH!” Mitchell slowed down and looked over his shoulder.  
“Keep going you stupid cock waffle!”  
“What?”  
“Keep going!”

Mitchell accelerated again and Anders checked the rear. There were no more pursuers in sight, and the ones he had put down didn’t show up again. After a second he needed to catch his breath, he produced the compass again. They had been thrown pretty far off course.

In the end, they reached their destination without further molestation. Mitchell brought the snowmobile to a halt and both of them got up to cautiously walk towards the edge of the crevasse.

“How far does this go?” Mitchell asked.  
“Fuck if I know,” Anders replied. “Better get going.”

They exchanged a look and each of them could see the anticipation in the other’s eyes. Whatever was down there, they were getting closer and closer to solving that mystery.

Mitchell was a completely inexperienced climber and while Anders had done some climbing before, he had never attempted the descent into a crevasse. Their progress was slow and exhausting. 

When they had finally reached the bottom and the small meltwater stream, they were too beat to be thrilled for a good long while. They gulped down electrolytic fluid and water and wolfed down a few energy bars before stacking up their gear. 

The light around them was eerie. Dark blue and strangely translucent, as if the ambience couldn’t quite decide if it should be dark or not down here. 

“Where do we go?” Mitchell asked in a low voice.  
“Upstream,” Anders replied.  
“Why?”  
“Guts.”  
“Right then.”

They cautiously followed the little stream and soon lost sight of the sky. The tunnel narrowed and lowered, and in the end they had to duck and could reach the walls on either side with outstretched hands. It was just as Anders was about to suggest they turn around that they suddenly stepped into a cave. It wasn’t large, but the light seemed even more unearthly here. And in the centre of the cave…

“Anders…”  
“I see it.”

There stood a large stone, made from the same rock as the stone in Norway and the one in Denmark. This one though wasn’t triangular and only roughly hewn. And on the side facing them was an engraving of the Yggdrassil, the same symbol as on the other two stones but much larger.

  


A strange, faraway rhythmic gushing was the only sound apart from the little stream and the occasional drop of water.

The two of them stood and stared at the large stone for a moment before hesitantly approaching it. There was no inscription on the other side. Anders frowned at the stone when Mitchell suddenly froze. 

“Anders…” he whispered, his voice hardly audible. 

Anders slowly turned around. Behind the stone, in the wall of the glacier, was the entrance to another cave. It was pitch black inside. He produced a flashlight and the two cautiously walked towards the mouth of the cave. Pointing the flashlight inside, they could see that it was a narrow passage leading into darkness. They exchanged a look and after a moment, a nod.

They hardly dared to breathe, and they were walking closely together. The flashlight did little else than to paint a bright circle of light onto the ground before them. It seemed to be hard-packed dirt. 

After what seemed an eternity but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, they suddenly and without warning stepped out into the open. 

Yet this time it wasn’t another cave. There was a bright blue sky above them, the ground was covered in low grass, and a gentle wind caressed their face. 

And before them stood the most enormous tree they had ever seen and, likely, would ever see. At the base, where the roots dug into the soil, the trunk was a solid wall of cragged, rough bark and the canopy seemed to fill half the sky. The leaves stirred in the breeze but there was no other sound.

“Yggdrasil…” Mitchell said in a suffocated whisper. 

Anders was at a loss for words. There she was. The Yggdrasil, the mythical Tree of Life, the centre of the world and all nine realms. 

But before either of them could take another step a harsh voice snarled behind them:

“How nice of you to show us the way, gentlemen.”

Mitchell and Anders spun around to see a middle aged man with blonde hair and a receding hair line smile at them in a very unpleasant way. He was flanked by two goons with machine guns pointing at them. The pistol Anders had captured was pretty useless now, but the rifle that was still lying next to the snowmobile wouldn’t have been much better with one against two even if Anders hadn’t emptied the whole magazine into the last two vampires.

“Herrick.” Mitchell’s voice couldn’t have held more hate and contempt.  
“Mitchell.” Herrick smiled a jovial, infuriating smile. “Fancy running into you again. I’m a bit disappointed, I have to say. You were in such a hurry to leave that you didn’t even say goodbye.”

Mitchell drew a deep shaky breath and gritted his teeth.   
“And you have a very clever friend there, I have to admit.” His smile was now directed at Anders. “Clever and Handsome. You would make an exceptional vampire. A true asset to our ranks.”  
“Pass,” Anders said and crossed his arms. “I’m a bit squeamish about blood, you know.”

Herrick smiled again, his eyes as impassionate as a snake’s. 

“So,” he said after a moment. “You’ve done a very fine job figuring all this out, Dr Johnson. We’ve been at this for years and here you go and put us in our place by solving this puzzle within less than a month.”  
“Maybe it’s because I’m not otherwise distracted by busily killing people?”  
Herrick chuckled. “Maybe yes... you see, we tried to employ a lot of smart people.” He slowly walked towards them, goons in attendance. “But none of them were successful.”  
“So you ate them?”  
“Please.” Herrick looked mildly scandalised. “We persuaded them to join our ranks.”  
Anders crossed his arms. “Persuaded?”  
“Well, business is business and we can always use bright minds,” Herrick replied. “And those who refused... well, those we ate!” He laughed, very pleased at his own joke, before his mood sobered again. “But be that as it may, we never found one who was as capable as you. That was achieved by Mitchell, my faithful assistant.”

“Forget it Herrick!” Mitchell spat. “I’m not your fucking lap dog!”  
“No... lap dog would be the wrong term here.” Herrick tapped his chin. “More of a retriever, I guess. But a rather stupid one.”

Anders looked back and forth between Mitchell and Herrick. Mitchell was gritting his teeth and Herrick was smiling mildly back. It was that sort of smile that made his fist curl inside his pockets, wishing he could just plant it there between those teeth.

“Or do you really think you managed to escape a stronghold full of vampires just by luck?” Herrick stepped closer. “Did you really think you could give us the slip without us noticing?”  
Mitchell swallowed.  
“You did, didn’t you?” Herrick chuckled and pointed a forefinger at him. “You did! God, this is priceless!”  
“What’s your fucking point, Herrick?”

“My point?” Herrick said, instantly back to being menacing. “My point is that I knew you were on to something you didn’t want to let on, so I let you go to see where you would lead us. And Io and behold...” He opened his arms and gestured towards the Yggdrasil. “Here we are.”

Mitchell closed his eyes and dropped his head.

“So.” Herrick addressed Anders again. “Thank you very much.”  
“You’re so not welcome,” Anders snapped. “What the fuck are you going to do with her now?”  
“Oh, nothing as of yet.” Herrick took a few steps towards the tree. “We’re just taking a piece along for research.”  
“A PIECE!” Anders jumped forward and was only stopped by the business end of a machine gun poking into his ribs. “You’re... you’re going to cut off a piece of the Yggdrasil?!”  
“Just a branch,” Herrick replied absentmindedly as he reached the tree. “After all, we now know where to find more if we need it, but I think it prudent to be thrifty for now.”

One of Herrick’s henchmen positioned himself directly behind Anders and Mitchell while the other one handed Herrick his gun. Smiling brightly as if he was holding a bunch of flowers Herrick rested his finger on the trigger and Anders and Mitchell were forced to watch helplessly as the vampire headed for the tree. He put on heavy gloves, produced a pruning saw and swiftly began to climb up the rough bark. Once he had reached a branch he brachiated along that until he found a suitable piece he could cut off. 

Anders desperately wished for some sort of godly wrath, a punishment for the desecration of something so sacred and powerful, but no such luck. The henchman came back with the stick, tearing off smaller branches and twigs on the way and Herrick looked at it with a mixture of glee and unmasked hunger.

“Perfect,” he muttered. “It’s perfect...”

He stared at it for a moment longer before addressing Anders and Mitchell again. 

“So, gentlemen, it was a pleasure meeting you,” he said. “But I’m afraid this is where we part. I would love to stay and chat a bit, maybe I could convince you to join us after all, Dr Johnson...”  
“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” Anders cut in and pulled the pistol.   
“Please.” Herrick smiled and shook his head. “A pistol? Seriously?”  
Anders pointed the pistol to his own temple, his cheekbones protruding and his eyes narrow. “One more step and I’ll put a bullet into my conk.”

Herrick raised both eyebrows. “Of course, suit yourself then. Leave the mysteries of this world unsolved, then. Who needs a limitless supply of lifetime anyway? Surely not a scientist and explorer like you, Dr Johnson.”  
“If you’re trying to cajole me then I can assure you it’s not working.”

Herrick gave him a long, derisive look and then shrugged. He beckoned his two goons and the one who had brought Herrick the branch exchanged it for the machine gun again. 

“My regards, gentlemen,” Herrick said and headed for the mouth of the dark passage. “Au revoir.”

The moment Herrick entered the passage Anders dropped the pistol and sank to his knees. He was shaking. 

“Anders?” Mitchell fell down beside him. “Anders...are you okay?”  
“No...” Anders gave back in a somewhat shaky voice. “No, I just threatened someone, who wanted to turn me into a monster, with committing suicide.”  
“Shit...” After a moment, Mitchell put a hand onto his shoulder. “Anything I can do?”  
Anders shook his head. “Just gimme a moment.”

Anders and Mitchell stared at the dark cave at the bottom of the face of a huge cliff, but they didn’t move for a good long while, not wanting to run into the business end of a machine gun in the dark. Once they were reasonably sure they could cross without bumping into the three vampires they hurried back through the tunnel as well. On a whim, Anders picked up one of the small twigs with leaves on and slipped it into a pocket of his utility vest.

There was no one and nothing in sight so they jogged past the stone and hurried through the narrow passage towards the crevasse as fast as they could. Anders had his pistol ready, and the passage around them began to widen again as they got closer to the mouth of the crevasse when they heard the rhythmic thumping again.

They reached the place where they had finished their descent when they finally found out what it was.

A helicopter was hovering above the crevasse, and at the bottom of a long rope hanging down from it the last of the henchmen was still dangling and climbing up. Anders fired a shot but missed and when he pulled the trigger a second time, all the gun did was click. He threw it down with a vile curse.

The last of Herrick’s goons quickly climbed up the rope and the helicopter vanished out of sight. 

“Fuck.” Anders shook his head. “What a fucking piece of shit!”  
Mitchell fell down and pulled up his knees. “Fuck... what are we going to do now?”  
“Get out of here,” Anders replied. “Get back to Reykjavik and get the stick back. We can’t let them keep it!”  
Mitchell didn’t reply.  
“Come on Mitch...” Anders nudged him with his foot. “Snap out of it! We need to get it back!”

Easier said than done, however. The vampires had taken all their gear, not only the supplies but also their climbing gear. 

They stared at the spot where they had stashed their packs in silent shock.

“Oh god no...” Mitchell’s voice was hoarse.  
Anders crossed his arms. “Don’t think god has anything to do with this.”   
Mitchell narrowed his eyes. “Very funny!”  
“I wasn’t trying to be funny!”  
“Then stop making fun of me!”   
“I am not making fun of you, just of your expression!”  
Mitchell spun around. “Yes, because to you I’m just a dumbass grunt to do the heavy lifting!!”  
“You gotta have at least some smarts to have found that book though I fail to see where you put it before meeting me in Bucharest!!”

Mitchell snorted like an angry bull and was just about to retort when Anders took a step back with dangerously narrowing eyes.

“Say,” he asked with deadly calm. “What did he mean anyway, your lap dog? And what about finding someone who’s capable to figure it out?”  
Mitchell suddenly paled and took a step back. “I don’t...  
Anders’s face was a mask of cold anger.  
“I don’t... Anders, I swear...” Mitchell ran both hands through his hair. “I didn’t... I wasn’t going to sell you out! I swear I wasn’t! I was running because I didn’t want them to learn what I knew!”  
“Fucking good job you did there.”  
“I know!” Mitchell’s voice echoed back from the walls of the gorge.

“So. If you’re not working for them, then what’s your deal with the Yggdrasil? Why were you... recruited by them?”  
Mitchell stared at him with parted lips before swallowing hard. “I was...”  
“Spit it out! You’ve been keeping things from me since we met! I think it’s about time you come clean with this!”

Mitchell moistened his lips with a flick of his tongue. “I wanted...”  
“I’m running out of patience though there’s hardly anything else to do down here while we’re waiting to turn into popsicles.”  
“I wanted...” Mitchell heaved a heavy sigh and stared at his feet. “I wanted... I was hoping that the Yggdrasil... she’s the tree of life, right? I was hoping she could cure me... because nothing else can.”

Anders was just about to reply when the meaning of Mitchell’s last words sunk in. He shut his mouth and took a deep breath. 

“Oh,” he said.

Mitchell kept staring at the ground.

“I’m... actually, saying I’m sorry is kind of pointless, right?”  
Mitchell shrugged.  
Anders cleared his throat. “Right... uh... I don’t really know what to say...”  
“Just don’t say anything,” Mitchell gave back meekly. “There really is no point, after all.”  
“Oh for fuck’s sake...” Anders dragged both hands down his face. 

After a long pause, Mitchell lifted his head again. “And now?”  
Anders took a deep breath and pressed his lips together before speaking. “Find another way out.”  
“What?” Mitchell chuckled without humour. “Out of a glacier?”  
“You know, if we don’t want to turn into a nice, interesting project for future archaeologists then we’d better. There might be another way, the only question is: will we be able to take it?”  
“And what way is that?” Mitchell asked sceptically.  
“The meltwater stream,” Anders replied. “Though I have no idea where it leads, or if we’d need scuba gear for that matter. It’s our only chance, though.”

And since there was nothing else they could do, Mitchell and Anders began to follow the stream at the bottom of the crevasse, downstream this time. 

It soon became clear that this ordeal was pushing Anders to his very limits. He had been running on precious little sleep lately, and now the adrenaline of the chase and the discovery and the subsequent threat to their lives by either bullets or fangs began to wear off. He was exhausted, he was freezing, and he was hungry. But as he had said, he didn’t want to become a future archaeology PhD student’s thesis project, so he stumbled on, gritting his teeth.

“Anders? Do you need a break?”  
Anders shook his head. “Gotta keep going,” he muttered.

But with his feet getting numb from the cold he suddenly stumbled and would have landed flat on his face right in the stream if Mitchell hadn’t caught him. He was beginning to feel a little faint and the cold had turned into a stinging pain in his muscles but still, Anders knew perfectly well that if Mitchell hadn’t caught him and he had landed in the stream then he would’ve been done for. Not a chance in hell he would have survived being soaked in ice-cold water. He was just about to suggest Mitchell leave him here to become a science project after all when he felt the world lurch. 

It took him a second to realise that Mitchell had hoisted him up into his arms and was now carrying him bridal style. He somehow felt he should mention the indignity of it, but he was too beat to protest.

How much time had passed in the end neither Anders nor Mitchell could say, but when they finally reached the mouth of the small cave out of which the stream escaped and continued its way downhill it was in the middle of the night. Mitchell found a spot of dry grass that grew in the wind shadow of a cluster of rocks where he gently deposited Anders on the ground before sitting down next to him. 

They were surrounded by the strange, eerie, reddish twilight of the northern summer nights where the sun never goes down completely. It seemed as unreal as the light inside the glacier in its blue, translucent coldness. 

Anders curled up and tried to stop his teeth from chattering. Again, he could only marvel at the fact how little Mitchell seemed to be bothered by the cold. 

“Anders?” Mitchell moved closer. “Will you be okay?”  
“Eventually.” Anders closed his eyes. “I guess. Since I didn’t turn into a popsicle after all.”  
“Your lips are... kind of blue.”  
“The fact that I’m not a popsicle doesn’t mean I’m not freezing my ass off.”  
“Crap.” Mitchell gave him a worried look. “And we don’t even have a blanket... you need to get warm again.”  
“No shit, Sherlock.”

Mitchell huffed out a somewhat exasperated sigh and moved even closer before draping both arms around Anders. 

“You ever heard of the concept of personal space, Mitch?”  
“Have you ever heard of the concept of sharing body warmth?”  
Anders hunched his shoulders and remained tense.  
“Come on, I promise I’m not contagious.”  
“It’s not that...” Anders shook his head and exhaled a long, drawn out breath. “Oh for fuck’s sake who needs dignity anyway.”

He resigned to his fate and let Mitchell cuddle him and despite his misgivings he had to admit that being out of the wind and held by the taller man was rather pleasant. Not that pleasant. Not like that. Just...  
Warmth. Two men sharing body warmth. No innuendo whatsoever. 

Anders sighed again and curled up. There was no use in pretending that he didn’t need what Mitchell was offering.

They didn’t speak any more that night.

* * *

They were up and going again with sunrise. They had emerged from the glacier at the south end, so trying to round it to get back to their car was pointless as it would have taken them days on foot. Instead they headed south where they would eventually reach roads and settlements again. Only, how long they would have to walk for that, neither of them could say. 

Stumbling and hobbling on aching, freezing feet, Anders followed Mitchell and suddenly realised that again, the other man wasn’t half as miserable as Anders was. What a tough, tough guy. Tough as balls and with the soul of a puppy. Oh, and a terminal disease that modern medicine was unable to cure. 

_Fuck._

He stubbed his toe on a rock and his thoughts derailed again; his aching feet were taking up too much of his consciousness right now.

“Fuck...” He shook his head and looked at his feet. “I’m fucking exhausted.”  
“Oh...” Mitchell walked to his side. “Yeah... so am I.”

They were both staring southwards again when they simultaneously spotted something move down the slope. Some sort of cattle, probably.

As they got closer however, they realised that the animals weren’t cattle but horses. Iceland horses, roaming the wilderness seemingly without any human supervision.

The animals were watching them with cocked ears and bright eyes as they approached and were apparently not afraid of them at all.

“If there are horses, then there has to be a farm or something, right?” Mitchell cautiously reached out for one of the creatures. The horse, a dark brown gelding with an almost black mane, snorted with two billowing clouds rushing out of his nostrils but let Mitchell touch it between the eyes.   
“Iceland is extremely sparsely populated,” Anders replied cautiously. “Fuck knows how many miles there are between here and their owner.”

The horses clustered around them and one of them began to inspect Anders’s parka with cautious nibbles. 

“Hey!” Anders spun around and the horse threw up its head with a snort. “Stop eating my jacket!”

Mitchell, in the meantime, had seemingly found a friend as he was now cradling the horse’s chin in one hand while rubbing the other up and down the soft, velvety nose. Mitchell’s eyes were shining with delight and the horse seemed pleased as well.

“Here, mo chara,” He crooned at the horse. “Do you think you and your buddies could help us? We really need to get back to civilisation.”  
The horse’s ears flipped back and forth a few times.   
“I would be so grateful, you know.” He reached out and scratched between the ears. The horse’s eyelids drooped a little. “Please? Mo áilleacht beag... we really need your help.”

“Horse whisperer,” Anders muttered rather baffled when the horse didn’t bat an eyelash at Mitchell’s attempt to climb onto its back. “Bloody show off.”  
Mitchell grinned at him with his fingers buried into the black mane. 

But since he had no intention to jog after Mitchell on horseback he turned around to look at the grey mare that had nibbled his jacket. 

“Babe,” he said with a smile. “You think we could get along enough to make this work?”  
The mare snorted.  
“Is that a yes or a no?”  
With a soft, low neigh the mare nudged Anders in the side and seemed to want to dig into his pocket.  
“Hey! I don’t have any treats in there, just a compass, and if you eat that then this is over!”

The mare seemed dissatisfied but Anders could only shrug. 

“Honestly, I don’t have anything. If I had, you’d be the first to get it, promise.”  
Another neigh.  
“Cross my heart!”

There was a silent stand-off between man and mare for a moment. 

“Good girl,” Anders said softly and reached out to scratch the mare between the ears. “Goooood girl...”

Iceland horses aren’t a tall race, thankfully, which makes it comparatively easy to mount them without a saddle. Still, that requires some practice too, practice Anders didn’t have. He lifted one leg and took a good grip on two handfuls of mane to pull himself up. The mare twitched her ears back and bucked, and Anders lost his balance and landed flat on his arse.

“You bloody ruminant!”  
“Anders, horses aren’t ruminants!”  
“Fuck if I care!” Anders growled. “I’m an archaeologist, not a farmer!”  
Mitchell didn’t even attempt to stifle his laughter.  
“Hilarious!” Anders got up and rolled his shoulders and resisted to rub his aching backside.  
“You probably hurt her, pulling at her mane like that!”  
“Got a better idea?”

The grey mare shook her head with a snort and gave Anders a slightly distrustful look.

Anders took a deep breath and looked around. There was about another dozen horses, but they had kept a distance and watched them with careful curiosity. Tying to approach those would likely be a waste of time. 

“Right.” Anders looked at the mare again. “I can see you have definitely more pull here.”  
The mare exhaled a cloud of warm breath into Anders’s face.  
“But you know what? Horse breath is definitely more pleasant than dog breath. Warm, too.”  
Shaking her head, the mare made her mane fly.  
“Yes, you’re a beauty, and I am completely at your mercy. My life is in your hands... hooves. Can we please do this now?”

Mitchell had slid down from his horse and now stepped to his side. “Come on, I’ll give you a hand up.”

Anders rested one foot in Mitchell’s folded hands and took a more cautious hold of the mane this time. The mare cocked her ears as if she recognised that manoeuvre, and as Mitchell boosted Anders up she leaned in to counterbalance the weight. Mitchell however hadn’t seen that move coming and Anders went right over the horseback and hit the ground on the other side. Luckily he had enough presence of mind to roll off his shoulder. He sat on his heels and looked up after getting his balance back, and both Mitchell and the mare were quite obviously biting back a grin.

“Three is a charm,” Anders said in tired resignation and he and Mitchell made another attempt. This time Anders wasn’t boosted up too fast but he lost his balance. The mare held still until the moment he landed on her back before prancing a few steps in surprise, with Anders hanging helplessly across her back like a sack and cussing her in several languages. 

Mitchell was laughing so hard he had tears on his cheeks. 

Eventually Anders had managed to get himself into a sitting position and grabbed a handful of mane. He looked at Mitchell who was only slowly calming down.

“Right,” Anders said after a moment. “Now that I completely and utterly lost my dignity and made a total ass of myself, can we proceed?”  
“Okay...” Mitchell wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Where do we have to go?”  
“Fuck if I know.” Anders took his compass and flipped it open. “That way is south,” he said and extended one hand. “I guess that’s the shortest way back to some sort of civilisation.”

Mitchell clicked his tongue and gently nudged his horse southwards. Anders’s grey mare followed, and the rest of the small herd trailed behind as if they were still trying to figure out what was happening. 

Anders quickly forgot about any jokes about riding, mounting and going bareback. His feet didn’t hurt as much anymore and neither was he on his way into hypothermia, but anything else began to hurt instead now. He wasn’t a cowboy. Neither was Mitchell, truth to be told, but he seemed to take to horseback like a duck to water. Anders couldn’t shake the feeling that the only reason he was still up here was because the grey mare was feeling charitable.

At one point Anders caught himself staring at Mitchell’s back. Or rather, at his backside that was rocking back and forth on horseback in a rather distracting way. It was a damn fine ass. 

_Don’t fucking go there, AJ. Just don’t. Focus._

“Anders?” Mitchell turned around, tearing Anders out of his thoughts. “So what next?”

Anders felt his cheeks burn at the realisation that he had been staring at Mitchell for fuck knew how long and that the other man had caught him doing so.

“Get the car back and go back to Reykjavik,” he replied while trying to think of his poor little balls that had to be chafed raw by now rather than be further distracted by Mitchell’s booty. There was no use whatsoever in thinking about Mitchell’s booty no matter how fine a booty that was. “And then figure out where the vampires have taken the stick.”

Mitchell stared straight ahead. “They do have a stronghold in the Transylvanian Alps,” he said thoughtfully.  
“You mentioned that before, yes.” Anders closed his eyes again.   
“So... my best guess is that we have to go there.”

They rounded a rocky outcrop and descended a slope. Down in the valley a few buildings came into view. 

Anders had rarely welcomed a view that much. “So once I am actually able to walk again we’ll leave this blasted country and get back to where we started, right?”  
“Bucharest?”  
“Bucharest.”


	5. Reykjavik-Bucharest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So obviously this story is not abandoned, and I am sorry for that abysmally long wait, but I am having difficulties focussing on many wips at once. I used to be able to do that; I am bi-polar and when I was in manic phase I could juggle several wips and write a chapter a day for two of them, but now, on medication, I can’t do that anymore. It’s frustrating at times, and it’s better this way but I sometimes miss being able to write like that. So, I have another wip that is very dear to my heart, and I have my original stuff, but this will be finished. I have started working on the last chapter. I can’t say how long it will take, but I will finish this.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Remember when Anders and Mitchell were faced with a field of slurry around the Danish runestone in chapter 3? My friend eeftheotter has made an edit for that scene and the two are so not happy. Go back and have a look, it will make you smirk.
> 
> * * *

  


* * *

They had changed planes in Luton and had arrived in Bucharest in the middle of the night, absolutely knackered. Still, as soon as they had dropped their suitcases in a hotel room, Anders went through his notes again, chewing on his pencil. 

Here they were, on their way after the vampires who had stolen a piece of the Yggdrasil, the world tree, the location of which was now known to them as well. They had to be stopped, and then the tree needed to be protected from exploitation. It could be the greatest blessing to mankind – but it would be catastrophic in the wrong hands. 

So they had solved the riddle and found the tree. Anders knew he should feel elated and satisfied, but something was missing. His instincts kept telling him that there was still something he was missing. Only... the puzzle about the Yggdrasil was solved. What else was there to figure out, apart from how to get the branch back so the vampires couldn’t destroy mankind?

“Anders?” Mitchell dug through his suitcase. “Did you accidentally pack my washbag?”

Anders checked his own suitcase and found that he had indeed two washbags. He threw Mitchell his and sat down again while Mitchell vanished into the bathroom. 

“Yggdrasil,” Anders muttered to himself as he leafed through his notebook. “Yggdrasil. Three rune stones, and the world tree.”

He threw his pencil down and crossed his arms. Vampires. His thoughts went back to the moment that the one Mitchell had called Herrick had caught up with them. 

_“Mitchell. Fancy running into you again. I’m a bit disappointed, I have to say. You were in such a hurry to leave that you didn’t even say goodbye.”_

Vampires...

Mitchell’s words, back then during the first time around in Bucharest.

_“Crazy Nazis?”_  
_“No. Vampires. Don't believe me?”_  
_“I find it a bit hard to swallow, yes._

_“And what would vampires want with the Yggdrasil?”_  
_“I... uh... I'm just... a means to an end. But when I realised what they were after, I managed to get away.”_  
_“From vampires.”_

_“What those... people who... I was working for... found out is that the Yggdrasil, the tree of life, could magnify... their powers, but being as they are powers of darkness, it would enable them to... ah... they believe they can turn people into vampires without having to bite them and feed them our blood. That's what they think, at least.”_  
_“And where do you come in?”_

Magnified powers. Vampires. Vampires...

Anders’s memory had always been splendid, and something tugged at his mind.

These haltingly given explanations nudged him as if...

Vampires...

Anders narrowed his eyes.

_... they believe they can turn people into vampires without having to bite them and feed them our blood..._

“For fuck’s sake...” It was only a whisper. “You motherfucking son of an undead bitch...”

For some reason, Anders had the feeling he should have picked up on that long ago. And he might have, if he hadn’t been so distracted by Mitchell’s looks. Suddenly, in hindsight, it was all bloody obvious, so obvious that Anders couldn’t suppress a snort and a bitter, little chuckle. 

The strength and stamina, and the imperviousness against the cold. So little need for sleep. The fact that Herrick... so Mitchell wasn’t his lap dog, but he had done a fucking good job of it anyway. That was it, the little thing that had always sat in the back of his mind like a tiny, grating background noise. 

He should’ve picked up on that. Damn that gorgeous ass.

Anders hurried towards his suitcase and unpacked the items he had declared as archaeological finds in customs and security checks. He had known from the beginning they would have to deal with vampires, but that he had been so close to one of them all the time...

When Mitchell opened the bathroom door he gasped and covered his eyes as if Anders had pointed a spotlight into his face. 

Anders was wearing a silver cross right on top of his clothing, and he was armed with a wooden stake and a mallet.

“Anders!” Mitchell staggered back.  
“You fucking, deceiving son of a bitch!”  
“Anders no!” Mitchell threw up his arms to shield himself. “No! Please! Let me...”  
“Explain?” Anders snarled. “Explain why you didn’t tell me...”  
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mitchell took another step back as Anders raised the stake. “If I had told you, would you have helped me?”  
“Of course not, you fucker! And Herrick would never have found the Yggdrasil either! So maybe you’re not his lap dog, but you were a fucking effective retriever!”  
“Anders, I beg you! I didn’t have a choice!”

Anders hefted the stake in his hand and gritted his teeth. Mitchell swallowed hard and licked his lips.

“Anders, please...” Mitchell said imploringly. “Anders... I am not on their side. What I said to you, down in the crevasse... I meant it. The reason I was after the Yggdrasil was because I hoped it...”  
“It would give you power over Herrick?”  
“No.” Mitchell swallowed again. “I was hoping it could cure me.”  
“Cure you. I thought vampires can’t get sick?”  
“I am talking about vampirism, Anders.”

Anders nervously licked his lips and kept a firm hold of the stake. “So?”  
“I wanted to cure my vampirism, Anders.”  
Tilting his head, Anders pressed his lips together as he was beginning to see daylight again. “You wanted...”  
“I wanted to become human again.”

For a long, agonizing moment, the two stared at each other.

“I...” Mitchell swallowed audibly for the third time and shook his head, his eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry I lied to you, but I knew... you wouldn’t have helped me. And I swear... I didn’t know Herrick was after us himself. I swear!”  
“Give me one reason why I should trust you.”  
“I saved your life?” Mitchell whispered, a tear trickling down his cheek. “I could have ended it, down there in the crevasse, fed from you and replenished my strength and go and find another place to hide from Herrick, hoping that he wouldn’t find me again.”

Slowly, and hesitantly, Anders lowered the stake a bit. “I hate to say that, but... it didn’t seem like the branch Herrick and his goons took had any effect on them.”  
Mitchell shrugged and wiped a hand across his face. “They were all wearing gloves. But maybe... maybe it really wouldn’t work. I just wanted...” His voice broke. “I wanted to try.... I never wanted this! I just want to be human again! I’ve been a monster for more than eight decades!”  
“Eight decades?” Anders asked tonelessly.  
“I was recruited on a battlefield in World War two. I ran into Herrick, he was on the side of the Nazis. I offered myself so he would let my men go.”

Anders swallowed hard now as well.

“Anders, please...” Mitchell shook his head. “I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”  
“Yeah, so you said.” Anders pressed his lips together.  
Mitchell lowered his eyes and shrugged. “It was a fool’s hope.” Then he spread his arms a bit and his voice was heavy and dull. “So... this is it. There is no cure. There’s no hope. Just end it. You’ll be doing me a favour.”

Mitchell closed his hand around Anders’s wrist and brought it up, resting the stake against his chest. 

Anders gritted his teeth. Mitchell looked at him, a fatalistic look in his eyes. He hefted the mallet again. 

Mitchell closed his eyes. 

After an endless silent moment, Anders lowered the mallet and dropped the stake. 

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered. 

Yet another long, silent moment passed before Mitchell opened his eyes again. A tear trickled down his cheek, followed by another on the other cheek. 

Anders closed his eyes, his shoulder heaving under a heavy sigh. “I need a drink.”

* * *

Anders had ordered room service while Mitchell had dressed in the bathroom, and now they were sitting on their respective beds, each of them a glass of vodka in their hands. They were warily eyeing each other. 

“So,” Anders said finally.  
“So.” Mitchell took a sip of his drink and shrugged. “You won’t kill me then?”  
“Not yet, at least.” Anders took a sip as well. “After what happened I’m willing to give you the benefit of doubt.”  
“As good as it gets,” Mitchell said with a shrug and looked into his glass.

Anders didn’t reply and kept on eyeing Mitchell up. 

“Right,” Anders said after another long silence, and Mitchell was so lost in his thoughts that he flinched.  
He took a rather large sip of his vodka. “Right?”  
Anders shrugged. “I guess you’ll better get packing.”  
“I... oh. Yeah, right, I’d better do that, then.”

Anders watched him get up and put down the glass. He began throwing his stuff into the suitcase in careless haste. 

“So, any plans where you’re going?”  
Mitchell faltered.  
“Just curious.” Anders emptied his glass. “Not that I’m going to tell that asshole were you went anyway.”

Mitchell stared at the pair of socks in his hand. “I... I honestly don’t know. Overseas, probably. A city like New York or L.A. could swallow anyone.”  
“Right.” Anders scratched his chin. 

“And what about you?” Mitchell was still kneading the pair of socks between his hands. “What are your plans now?”  
Anders pressed his lips together for a moment. “I can’t let them keep it,” he finally said. “I have to try and get it back.”  
“What?!” Mitchell dropped the socks and took a step forward. “Are you crazy? They’re going to tear you apart if you so much as think of going there!”

Shaking his head, Anders got up and crossed his arms. “And what will happen if they keep it and find out how to use it? What will happen then? I can’t just let them keep it! I have to try and get it back!”  
Mitchell ran both hands through his hair, making his curls fly everywhere. “You’re mad! You can’t do that!”  
“Probably not.” Anders uncrossed his arms and went over to the table and picked up his note book. “That doesn’t stop me from trying.”  
“But you don’t even know where to go!”

“Ah.” Anders pointed his finger at him. “I was hoping you might give me a hint. You mentioned a stronghold in the Transylvanian Alps?”  
“Forget it!” Mitchell spat. “A castle full of vampires? You’d be dead before you got anywhere near the place!”  
“I’m not a total...”  
“I know who and what you are! But first of all, you’re human!”  
“And that makes me...”  
“Prey,” Mitchell said flatly. “And no, you can’t sneak in there either. Every single one of them who gets anywhere near you will know you for what you are.”

Anders opened and closed his fingers around the notebook. “I guess... is it the smell?”  
“No.” Mitchell shook his head with a bitter little smile. “It’s the heartbeat.”  
“The heartbeat?” Anders felt a confused frown creep into his face.  
“Yes.” Mitchell nodded, that mirthless smile still in place. “Vampires don’t have a heartbeat, or hardly so. It’s about one beat a minute. But a human heartbeat... it’s...”  
“Unmistakable?” Anders offered.  
“Pretty much.” Mitchell cleared his throat. “And... vampires can... hear it.”  
“No shit, I thought you could smell it.”

Mitchell crossed his arms and lowered his eyebrows. Being no match in that department, Anders crossed his arms and smirked.

“That is no laughing matter, Anders. They can hear your heartbeat. It’s... it’s like thunder. It’s not loud but... I can’t... I can’t not hear it.”  
“Hang on...” Anders narrowed his eyes. “You can hear my heartbeat from where you stand?”  
“I can hear your heartbeat from the bathroom, Anders.” Mitchell ran both hands down his face. “And I can hear the heartbeats of the people in the room next door and I don’t have to try very hard.”

That left Anders speechless. 

“Shit,” he said after a moment.

Mitchell could only nod.

“I see what you mean.” Anders dropped the notebook on the table and fell down in the chair. “Fuck. What am I gonna do now?”  
“I don’t know.” Mitchell sat down on the bed.  
“But what... hang on.” Anders leaned forward again. “If you can hear my heartbeat all the time... doesn’t that make you... hungry... or something?”

Mitchell looked up, very, very slowly. Anders found it very hard to meet his eyes. 

“I’ve been dry for two decades,” Mitchell said in a low, dead voice. “But I have killed more people than you will ever meet.”  
“Teeh.” Anders cocked one eyebrow. “Do you have any idea how many buffoons from all over the world you can find at one single conference on the topic of archaeological excavations in areas of conflict? I swear those bloody conference centres harbour more archaeologists than every uni ever produced. There was a seminar on diplomatic sign language last year and there were five hundred...”  
“Anders.”  
Anders crossed his arms. 

They looked at each other in silence.

“So, you’ve killed people. So have I.”  
“In defence.”  
“True.”  
“And you didn’t desecrate their corpses.”  
“I guess I haven’t, though what counts as desecration in some...”  
“Anders, for fuck’s sake.”

“Anyway.” Anders crossed his arms again. “Why am I not on the menu?”  
“Because I don’t want to kill you.”  
“And... no offence... but is there a lot of choice involved?”  
“Up to a certain... threshold.”  
“And what threshold would that be?”

Mitchell looked at his hands. “One, there’s the question if I am injured, or recently healed. The only way for me to replenish my strength is blood. And then, there’s the blood itself. I tried to desensitize me but the smell is... it’s primal.”  
“So... there’s not much control if you can smell blood.”  
“I got better over the years.”  
“Doesn’t that get awkward sometimes when you got colleagues who are on their period?”  
“Anders!” Mitchell roared.

Anders leaned the tiniest bit away from him. 

“I’d appreciate it very much...” Mitchell began in a lightly shaky voice. “If you would take this serious.”  
“I am taking this blo... fucking serious.” Anders shrugged. “Call it my scientific instincts kicking in.”  
Mitchell looked at him and sighed. “An interview with a vampire?”  
Anders flashed him a lopsided grin and made a _there-you-go_ -gesture. 

“So what else do you want to know?”  
“The thing... about the... fangs? I suppose a vampire would need them... unless you... sort of... filed them off when you went dry?”  
“No, I didn’t. They’re not visible most of the time. I... I guess you can call it shift. I shift, from this human looking form into... some...thing that still looks mostly human but very clearly isn’t.”  
“Hm.”  
“Hm what?”  
“That doesn’t satisfy my curiosity but I’m not really feeling suicidal today so I won’t ask how that looks like.”

Mitchell shrugged and looked at his feet. He rolled his shoulders, and when he looked up again his eyes were black orbs of darkness. He opened his mouth and hissed, displaying sharp canines in his upper jaw. 

Death sometimes takes on beautiful forms, but it is always equally terrifying.

The primal instincts of a mammal descendent from small rodents who used to share the earth with carnivorous reptiles the size of bulldozers made Anders jump up from the chair, but he had the wall at his back now and couldn’t retreat any further.

And for all that he had been through, in this adventure or on other occasions, he had never in his life known terror like this. His heart was racing so hard it hurt and he couldn’t even breathe. 

But before he could say or do anything else Mitchell’s eyes had returned to normal and the fangs vanished as well. There was only Mitchell now, messy curls, dark amber eyes, fuck-ugly knitted gloves.

Anders’s breath escaped him in a hard and heavy huff and his heart was still hammering in his chest, but his ability to think was slowly returning.

“Right,” he said. “You could make a fortune with that trick if you open your own Haunted House business.”

Rolling his eyes, Mitchell chose to ignore the last quip and shook his head again. “But you see now, right?”  
“See what?”  
“That you wouldn’t stand a chance getting in there, or even close to it.”  
“About as much as a paper dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell, yeah.” Anders sat down again and forced his breathing to slow down. 

Mitchell picked at his gloves.

“But... fuck!” Anders got up again and kicked the wall. “There has to be something! We can’t just sit here with our thumbs up our asses and let them destroy the world! We gotta do something! Anything!”  
“We?”  
“Uh?”

There was the trace of a wistful smile on Mitchell’s face. “You said _We_ gotta do something.”  
“Yeah, I did.” Anders combed his fingers through his hair with a crooked grin. “Force of habit I guess.”  
Mitchell shook his head with a breath of a mirthless chuckle coming from his lips.  
“I mean, it’s not as if I don’t get it,” Anders went on. “If I were you I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near that place ever again either.”  
Mitchell shrugged. 

Anders began pacing back and forth. “That is seven kinds of fucked up. And then some. You could get in there but you don’t want to, which I totally get. After what Herrick said it could be dangerous for you too, I reckon. And I can’t get in because I’d be dead before I could even lay my eyes on that place. Fuck!”

While Anders was pacing back and forth, cursing under his breath, Mitchell picked at his gloves and closed his eyes.

“Anders,” he said eventually and in a very low voice.  
“Hm?” Anders stopped pacing to look at him.  
“I could... I mean, if you can come up with some sort of plan I might... might be able to get you in there.”  
“I don’t like the way you said _might_ but let’s hear it.”

“You see.” Mitchell looked up at him. “It’s not as if there aren’t humans in there. But the only way for a human to get there is either as prisoner or... uh...”  
“Food. No need to try and spare my sensibilities.”  
“Right.” Mitchell stopped picking at his gloves. “I’m not a very good actor, and not a very good liar, either. But maybe I could convince Herrick that I changed my mind and bring you as a...”  
“A dead, dismembered mouse to drop on his doormat?”  
“You came up with that one.”  
“So you mean to say that I pretend to be your prisoner.”  
“I never said it was a brilliant idea.”  
“Right, because it fucking isn’t.”  
“Come up with something better.”

Anders tried. But it didn’t take him long to come to the conclusion that this shit-ass crazy idea was their only chance. 

“I guess normal weapons are not really of any use against vampires, right?”  
“They don’t kill us, but they do stop us or slow us down.”  
“So what about the classic anti-vampire armoury?”  
“As in?”

Anders pointed at the cross that was now hidden under his shirt. “Religious symbols?”  
“Not very effective. About as unpleasant as looking into a flashlight.”  
“Fuck. And... garlic?”  
“Myth, sorry. I love garlic on my pizza.”  
“Fuck number two. Holy water?”  
“That one definitely works.”  
“Silver bullets?”  
“That’s werewolves.”  
“Shit. Stakes work, though.”  
“If you get close enough.”

Anders rubbed a hand across his chin. “It’s not going to be easy.”  
“It’s a suicide mission.”  
“The question is what’s more suicidal.” Anders closed his eyes for a second. “Attempting to stop them or face the world they will create if we let them keep it.”

Their eyes met. 

“Let me show you where it is,” Mitchell said after a moment. 

Anders got his laptop and after going on Google maps, Mitchell showed him where to find the castle. 

“A castle in the Transylvanian Alps.” Anders shook his head. “How cliché.”  
“Most vampires, especially the older ones, are traditionalists.”  
“Is that actually Dracula’s castle?”  
“Since no one really knows where it is, it might be,” Mitchell replied. “But it is old, very old, and huge. I only know a part of it, and that’s another weak point in our plan.”  
“Some plan,” Anders said with a shake of his head. “But I can’t think of anything better.”

They figured out where they would have to go, which roads to take, and what they could take without being too conspicuous. 

“Are you really ready to pose as my prisoner?” Mitchell asked as they packed, to be ready to leave early the next day.  
“I don’t see any other solution,” Anders said and rolled his shoulders. “I mean... so far you didn’t eat me even if you could have, and if I get eaten now then I have at least tried.”

Both of them slept poorly that night. They got up again with the first light of dawn, and as early as they could they equipped themselves with a rented car and left Bucharest, heading north. 

After about an hour Anders took a deep breath. 

“Mitch?”  
“Yes?”  
“Can you do me a favour?”  
“Sure.”  
“Don’t...” Anders broke off, having trouble putting his thoughts into words. It sounded too terrible.

“Anders?”

Anders took another deep breath and Mitchell pulled over to look at him. 

“Anders?” He asked again.  
Finally Anders looked at him with his mouth a thin line. “Mitch... please don’t let them turn me.”  
This time it was Mitchell who took a deep breath, even if he didn’t have to. “I’d let them tear me apart from limb to limb before I let that happen.”

Their eyes met, and Anders nodded. Mitchell took his hand and squeezed it, but as Anders looked at their hands with a puzzled frown, he quickly let go again. When they looked at each other again, they both had a slightly nervous smile on their faces.

“Mitch?”  
“Hm?”  
“When this is over I’d like to have a drink with you.”  
Mitchell smiled and started the engine again. “I’ll take you up on that.”  
“Let’s get this over with. The sooner we get this sorted, the sooner we can get to that drink.”

They took a bumpy narrow road north towards the Transylvanian Alps and a castle full of vampires, armed with nothing but a cross, a few phials of holy water and Anders’s whip. 

They didn’t speak anymore.


End file.
